


_Gunmetal Sky

by glenarvon



Series: _Brilliancy [31]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Car Chases, DedSec - Freeform, Gen, Hacking, Mind Games, References to Drugs, Technobabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 08:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 67,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6847585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden Pearce does not go gentle into that good night. </p><p>Chapter 1: Lay of the Land_ Know thy enemy.<br/>Chapter 2: Beauty and the Beast_ Aiden takes care of an old friend.<br/>Chapter 3: Dave_ What's a hacker without a network?<br/>Chapters 4-5: Widow's Walk_ The cracks are beginning to show.<br/>Chapter 6: Springtime_ The seasons in the sun are gone.<br/>Chapters 7-9: Gunmetal Sky_ "But man is not made for defeat..."<br/>Chapter 10: Command & Control_ Know when you're beaten.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lay of the Land

**Author's Note:**

> Gunmetal Sky fills the time between Firewalker and Empty Darkness. It's going to be in several separate parts, similar to Nightcall.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Know thy enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note:** All the way back in Quaint Old World, there's a mention of Aiden tangling with drones. It's always bothered me that I never covered the special incident. So there, have the drones.

[takes place in april 2026]

* * *

****The plastic sheet on the ground isolated against the damp climbing up through the sludge and rock, but it wasn't doing anything against the cold. It was slowly permeating the layers of clothes Ray wore. He'd fallen for the propaganda that it was April and that spring was happening, but while it held true for Chicago, the countryside around Pawnee had its own microclimate and here, it felt more like it couldn't decide between rain and snow. The plastic sheet was a start, but his denim jacket was beginning to feel slightly soggy. He wore a bulletproof shirt underneath and its metamaterial delivered some small comfort, but he was beginning to wonder if he could get a pair of long-johns from the same fabric.

Ray flexed his shoulders with a groan, but the move only pushed his stomach harder into the cool and hard underground. He muttered a curse, but the distraction was only momentarily. In stiff fingers, he was holding a pair of binoculars against his eyes. They were linked with the digital Lenses in his eyes, which in turn were linked up with the phone that rested loosely in one hand, adjusting the binoculars with small movements of his fingers, controlling the data scrolling through his field of vision.

By his side, in a similar position and similarly equipped, Aiden Pearce hadn't said anything for a few long minutes.

The terrain dropped away just in front of them, opening the view between dark green pines and rocky, moss-covered ground, stretching a mile to the north, where the trees vanished to be replaced by the clear tips of hills and mountains surrounding Blume HQ. It used to be a reclusive place, hidden from sight by the landscape and hidden from passerbys by the quaint, if rundown, charm of Pawnee. People, especially Chicagoans were vaguely aware Blume HQ existed and where it was, but few had ever cared enough to seek it out. Blume's offices in the city were flashier and openly amendable to curious customers.

In the years since ctOS runaway success nationwide, Blume HQ had expanded far into the surrounding landscape. The company bought — or already owned — large swathes of the land surrounding the original central buildings. Now, people called the area Tech Meadows, home to several smoothly white structures for Blume's R&D departments and an on-site server farm dug deep into the bedrock, where the temperatures were stable, the rock supplied a natural heat-sink and even the worst storm or flood wouldn't reach.

"What they've been doing up here?" he muttered. "Looks like damned terraforming to me."

He saw several buildings reaching high in the sky that looked like apartment buildings and if he zoomed in, he could spot a plaza between them with a fountain in the middle and a group of parasoled café tables at one end. Blume's very own village, filled to the brim with handpicked geniuses hired straight out of college and brainwashed into the corporate identity before they could get any ideas of their own.

"They're making good money," Aiden observed.

"Good money it ain't," Ray growled. "Bad one, that's what it is. Bad money. Stinks all the way up here and we're in the wind."

They were close enough, Aiden's shoulder rubbed against his when he shrugged, there was the quiet moan of leather from his new coat and his voice the same rumbling listlessness he'd carried like a shield through the two weeks since the attack on his place in the Millennium Point high-rise. It was irritating, but it was also hard to blame him for his perpetual dark mood. Indeed, the thing that annoyed Ray the most was that he felt it beginning to rub up on him.

"Money doesn't stink," Aiden stated.

Ray grunted, kept it inaudible in the interests of keeping a useless argument from breaking out. He lowered the binoculars and pushed himself up on his elbow, rolled around and sat up. His joints groaned with him, kept too stiff for too long when it was too cold. He was beginning to feel old and he didn't like it one bit. It hammered away at the back of his head in all the quiet moments, late at night or early in the morning, in the gaps in time when he waited for a progress bar to fill. Sometimes, it slapped him in the face, too, when he caught himself considering to take the elevator and spare himself the stairs…

"There's something else," Aiden said after a moment, a hint of emotion in his voice cutting right through Ray's gloomy review.

Without a copy of Blume's new opePraetereaPraeterearating system, their days as free men were done. Their days as _living_ men were done, if it came to that. They knew too much, seen too much through the years. It made them dangerous to Blume and their cronies in politics and law enforcement. _Praeterea,_ Blume had code-named their new OS, but there hadn't been a beep of advertising about it yet. Their data was severely limited, but all signs pointed to Praeterea being ready to go by the end of the year, so it seemed like Blume wanted to do this under the radar.

Ray blinked irritably, wiped his hand on his cargos before he brushed the Lenses from his eyes and stuffed them into his pocket. His eyes burned with strain and his very eyeballs seemed to chafe in their sockets. He'd been looking through the Lenses for what? Four hours now? And he'd always been sensitive to the damn things.

"Oh, more?" he asked. "Ain't nothing we haven't seen before." He counted it off. "Guards, in groups of threes with modern combat gear and armed to the teeth and with their — entirely unconstitutional — right to shoot any trespasser who looks at their Mama wrong. Motion, sound and heat sensors. More cameras than you can shake a stick at and that's just after two hours of lying around in the mud. I'm not sure I'm up for more."

But he was, some perverse desire to see the exact outline of the fortress Blume had built right under their noses. He wanted to know in precise, garish detail all the points of his life that lead him here.

Aiden's back rose a little as he took a slightly deeper breath. His voice had dropped back to an apathetic growl. He moved his head a little, barely a glance past the binoculars in Ray's general direction.

"You wanted this," he said. "I wanted to quit."

Ray huffed. "You wanted to run away with your tail between your legs," he corrected. What he didn't say was that Aiden wanting to quit looked like a betrayal any way he turned it. They'd had their differences over the years, Aiden could be bone-headed and difficult and Ray knew himself well enough to know he was no different, but the one thing Ray wasn't willing to forgive was someone who couldn't stand by their principles.

Again Aiden shrugged, Ray got the impression he really didn't care.

Aiden said, "I don't know, I like to keep all bits attached."

Another deep breath, an effort to let it go before it spiralled in a direction neither of them wanted.

"There's something else," Aiden repeated.

Ray hesitated, not quite sure if he _wanted_ to let Aiden off the hook, but reasonably it made more sense to focus on Blume and why they were in this godforsaken corner of Illinois.

With deliberate slowness, Ray took his attention away from Aiden and back to the binoculars. He adjusted them to work without the Lenses and instead use their own HUD. Dropping back on his hands and knees, he lowered himself back to the cold ground with some reluctance. And to think he used to _like_ this place…

"What?" he asked.

"Small, black… thing," Aiden said and Ray snorted a tired laugh.

"It's hovering," Aiden added.

Ray squinted, groped for his phone and adjusted the output, zoomed in to the max, but all that achieved was that he lost orientation briefly, the binoculars only showing a patch of grey sky. He zoomed back out, then lowered the shake correction, to no avail.

"Ain't seeing shit," he said.

"Left of the flagpole, just above the line of buildings," Aiden directed and Ray zoomed out until he found the flagpole, then looked up along it until finally he caught the small thing seemingly hanging in the air. As he watched, it dipped down and became invisible against the darker background, only to appear again on the other side of the flagpole.

"Camera drone?" Ray offered.

"At that height? In that wind?" Aiden asked. "At that size?"

Dryly, he added, "Impressive."

Impressive indeed and not in a good way. He tried to get a better reading from the thing. If it was a drone, it would be communicating with something on the ground. Blume's buildings were impenetrable for signals, but perhaps they could intercept something from this high up.

They couldn't get into the Blume network from the outside, only the lower-tier workstations were still running the old OS and the new ones, where they encountered it, proved an entirely different sort of beast. But even so, his phone should be able to pick up _something_ out there, but other than some very strong draw on the power grid itself, there was nothing there. Blume was collecting all the data it could, but it was proving amazingly successful at keeping its own information — or any of the information — from leaking out. Which was not to say that Blume wasn't _using_ what assets they had, far from it. For years now you could see their hand in political decisions, not just Chicago or the state, but all the way to Washington, and the Supreme Court. It wasn't eradicating the democratic structures, it was just running its own thing right underneath them and no one seemed to know or care.

No doubt Blume Corporate Police was playing a large part in all of it, too. BCP could and would interfere with everything that even _appeared_ to threaten Blume infrastructure. And they weren't called 'police' for nothing, their jurisdiction actually superseded CPD where it affected Blume, and Blume got to decide what affected it or not. BCP conducted its own investigations and they had a habit of getting the results they wanted, whether they corresponded with reality or not.

Aiden had said nothing for a while, but now he moved again and asked, "How big do you think that thing is?"

"Bigger than a baseball, I guess," Ray shrugged. "If it's a camera that's 360° surveillance. It's going to scan your ugly mug and mine in the system in nano-seconds and realise we haven't been paying our parking tickets. I ain't gonna be pretty when that happens, you can bet your cap on it. The whole perimeter must be under watch, I wouldn't want to get much closer to it than we already are."

"No," Aiden agreed.

Ray coughed, lowered the binoculars and looked into the distance with his own two eyes, oddly comforted by how tranquil the landscape looked like this. Nothing nefarious to see now, was there? Nothing to worry about, all he had to do was never look through the binoculars again, or down on his phone.

"Looks like you had the right idea all along," he muttered.

"It's my special talent."

Ray sat up again, gave Aiden's back a brief stare and sneered, although it was probably just as well Aiden couldn't see it. Ray's patience frazzled out slowly, he said, "Yes, that's why you followed me all the way out here."

Aiden curled up and around, put the binoculars down and regained his feet without any apparent effort. The Lenses flickered green in his amused eyes. "Can't let you be suicidal all on your own," he said.

"Wait," he added as he walked away. It took him a moment to climb back down to the dirt road where they'd parked the car earlier.

Ray stood up, too, used the moment to stretch out and stamp some blood back into his leg, he tucked his hands away into his pockets for some warmth.

"I'm telling you," he said. "If there isn't any hot rum at the end of all this…"

He stopped when he heard the car's ignition, glanced over to watch as Aiden turned the car around and parked again.

"I'm truly going suicidal," he finished to himself. He turned on his heels and took a few steps to the very edge of the slope, kicked a small stone loose and watched it tumble down.

It was quiet out here, if only in the small space between Aiden killing the engine again and the time he took to come back. There was even some bird singing somewhere in the treetops, although it didn't sound very enthusiastic about it, as disappointed about the weather as Ray was.

Aiden's footsteps were slightly heavier when he returned, but Ray only looked back at him when he heard the smooth metallic snap as Aiden set up his rifle on the plastic sheet.

"You're never gonna hit that," he said, just because. It _was_ a long shot for a very small and moving target, even for a gunman like Aiden.

"I want to know what happens," Aiden said as if it was some kind of meaningful counterargument.

Ray pulled an unimpressed grimace, but took a few more steps aside. There was no reason to ruin the shot for Aiden and he wasn't in the mood to be a handy stand-in to blame for when he missed.

In stepping away, his gaze fell on the car.

"You think they'll be all over us like a bad rash," he observed. He turned back and watched Aiden get in position behind the rifle and make no answer to what was an obvious statement of fact.

"I'll drive," Ray finished. "You better hit something."

Aiden took his time, adjusted his aim, flexed his fingers before he settled his hand against the trigger, leant in behind the scope.

Ray picked up his binoculars again, grimaced when his fingers were hit by the cold air again, but he ignored it as he trained the binoculars on Blume HQ. He changed the setting to give him a wider few and a better oversight.

The first shot snapped hard in the empty air, the recoil punched through Aiden's shoulder and down through his back, the tension of his muscles visible even through his clothes. Nothing changed above Blume and Tech Meadows, so Ray assumed Aiden had missed, but he refrained from pointing it out.

At least gunshots were common in the area. There was always hunting season for one game or another and Blume wouldn't be able to know they'd been targeted. Pawnee was home to all sorts of dropouts, off-the-grid Offliners out in their ever-growing trailer park, the redneck remnants of the Pawnee Militia and the entire rest of the population sympathising with all of them.

The black thing dropped out of sight again and it took Ray a long minute until he spotted it again in a completely different place. A moment later, another thing cropped up, so there really were more than one of them. Some sort of surveillance seemed likely and Aiden was right, the drones were incredibly stable in the air, disconcertingly so.

Now that he knew what to look for, Ray spotted at least three more drones and he had no idea which one Aiden was aiming for. Even with the high-tech rifle, Aiden had to eyeball half the variables. Neither of them wanted to risk shooting even a rangefinder laser in Blume's general direction. Everything they knew about the place suggested such a thing would raise an instantaneous alarm and God knows what response Blume had ready to go.

Aiden shot again and Ray saw one of the small drones drop from sight after the minuscule delay, the time it took the bullet to cross the distance.

Immediately, all the drones lifted up, hovered like a thick black swarm above Blume HQ and Tech Meadows. There were considerably more than the three Ray had already seen. They numbered in the _hundreds_ out there.

"Oh," Aiden said quietly. Still lying on his belly, he turned to make eye contact with Ray, who kept an eye on the data feed of his phone, watched it gather what input it could from the incident. He had little time to analyse it on the go like this, he picked up a signal he couldn't immediately identify, but guessed it was the drones communicating with each other.

Aiden rolled to his feet.

"We need to leave," he said, already moving for the car. He only stopped when he realised Ray hadn't moved, still watching the data. He knew what he was looking for, the drones communicating and it was there, but barely detectable from the distance, but when Aiden had shot one of them, the signal strength had increased. The drones must share computing power, their OS kickstarting an analysis of what had happened, perhaps starting a response protocol or if they were running an AI, even determining an adequate response on their own.

The drone swarm lifted higher in the air, formed a cloud above Blume than set off in an loose arrowhead shape, seemingly untouched by the wind at their altitude, with only minor irregularities in their optimised flight pattern, compensating for the environmental conditions.

"We need to _leave,"_ Aiden repeated with more urgency, but Ray only shook from his motionlessness when Aiden closed his hand around Ray's upper arm and pulled sharply.

They hurried back to the pickup.

Aiden climbed in the driver's seat, but slipped on to ride shotgun. He set up the rifle against the side, but pulled out a MicroSMG, held the gun in his right hand, his phone in the left.

Ray climbed in, settled behind the wheel and hit the gas. The pickup sped down the dirt road, kicking up mud as it went.

"These aren't cameras," he said.

"You think?" Aiden asked back sardonically.

The road wound through the rocky forest, the mud clinging to the wheels, slowing them down.

Ray tried hard not to waste time looking into the rear-view mirrors, he was glad without the Lenses in his eyes, he didn't have to focus on the specifics of what was happening above and behind them. It got considerably harder to do when tension was coming off Aiden in waves, he turned in his seat, phone still in hand, but looked up from it, focussed on something above them.

Ray chanced a glance in the mirror but saw nothing but trees and mud-covered rock rushing away, until a gap in the uneven road dipped the car down in the front and he caught a glimpse of the sky behind them. His phone's original estimate had been two-hundred, but he hadn't lingered long enough to make sure it was accurate. So seeing only a thin smattering of black spots seemed like the first hint of good news.

He concentrated on the road, but said, "We're not fast enough."

"I know," Aiden replied and he sounded so blasé about it, Ray had to look at him again. Aiden had put the gun away, not willing to see what would happen if he shot at the drones again. Instead, he was intend on gathering all the information he could, gaze fixed on the drones for the Lens' input.

"Got a plan?" Ray asked.

Aiden took his sweet time before he answered, sensed the slow shake of Aiden's head, but didn't bother to look over.

Aiden said, "Keep going."

Ray snorted, finding some unexpected humour in the absurdity of the situation. But his was Pawnee, he'd been all over this place for a long time, Blume had never truly pushed him out, they only thought they had.

"I have an idea," Ray said after a moment of tense, pondering silence. "Can't shoot them all down, makes everything worse, gets all their little buddies on us, but if we… ah _shit!_ "

The drones had drawn level with them and one of them dropped to the hood, gave both men a short, clear moment to appraise its appearance. A little bigger than Ray's original estimate, it looked like a chitinous black sphere hung within a rotating circle. It had extended thin, prehensile feelers to keep itself upright.

The engine stalled and went dead. The speed of the car meant it didn't stop immediately, but kept going along the road, but with all electrical systems gone, Ray's attempt to brake was useless and turning the wheel only resulted in snapping the steering lock. The crashed into the shrubbery at the side of the road, brushed past a thick tree trunk and finally were stopped roughly as the car collided with a displaced, house-sized rock. Even the airbags didn't engage.

Deadpan, Ray said, "EMP, that was gonna be my idea, too."

"Very localised, though," Aiden remarked and the slight green glow from his eyes proved the Lenses and his attached phone were still working. He kicked open the door and slipped out, retrieving the SMG as he went, but leaving the rifle behind, it wouldn't do much good on the run anyway.

The drone lifted off from the hood, stabilised itself in the air and then shot a small projectile at Aiden, thin twin wires unwinding in the air behind it. Aiden's evasive half-turn wasn't fast enough and the projectile hit him in the upper chest, just beneath where the collar of his bulletproof shirt ended, tiny electrical sparks shot up along his throat, but the shirt deflected most of the current. Aiden hissed in pain, but his body didn't seize up.

By then, Ray had got out of the car on the other side, grunted a hasty but heartfelt curse and pulled his own gun, took aim and shot the drone from the sky. At least it wasn't armoured to hell and back, but perhaps there had been at least _some_ design limitations. He ducked back behind the car when another drone tried to taser him.

"Let's go!" Ray shouted, already turning away and painfully aware of the other drones closing in on them. Moving past the crashed car, he pushed into the thicket. Behind him, Aiden used the wires to reel in the incapacitated drone, then turned and hurried after Ray.

The forest ground was treacherous, especially off-road like this. Broken branches and muddy pits hiding hard rocks, slowing them down far more than was anywhere comfortable, but up above them, the trees and the shrubbery posed a similar navigational challenge for the drones. Ray didn't look back to see if their numbers had grown, only paid attention to Aiden with one ear either, heard him lumber through the forest, sometimes faster, sometimes slowing down to fire at the drones.

"T-Bone!" Aiden shouted, still moving. "Where the fuck are we going?"

If he could spare the time and the breath, Ray would've laughed. "My old place!" he shouted back.

He felt Aiden's surprise and skepticism, but Aiden didn't question him further. There was the chattering of the SMG and Ray liked to imagine he heard the drone tumble uselessly to the ground.

In his mind, Ray projected the route they needed to take, calculated where they had been and where they needed to go, accounting for all the tiny detours the terrain demanded. He didn't like it, they were quite far away and he felt the cool air burning in his lungs already, despite the adrenaline pumping through his body.

He suspected the drones were meant to incapacitate an attacker, mark their location and keep watch until BCP showed up to pick them up, charge them and let some Blume-internal tribunal sentence them to whatever they felt like it without involving the real police at all. Easy and neat. Anyone who went missing out here, who really cared anyway?

Would Blume bother to parade his or Aiden's head to the public at all? Risk either of them becoming some kind of martyr or would they just empty a round in each their heads, then dump them somewhere? He wasn't too keen to find out which, but it kept his mind occupied anyway.

A thin branch hit him in the face, drew a sharp line of pain across his cheek. He slapped at the branch, but tried not to let it slow him down. Behind him, the SMG snapped again and he heard the low metallic click as Aiden dropped the spent magazine and snapped in a new one.

The bushes thinned, advertising the change in terrain just a moment before Ray broke through to a narrow path winding through the forest. He slowed down, glanced back to make brief eye-contact with Aiden, who nodded, then Ray turned and down the path, broke through the thicket on the other side and forced a new path.

"Careful!" he shouted as he slowed down again a few minutes later. Aiden drew level with him, stopped sharply as the terrain in front of them unexpectedly opened up, a sharp decline from a broken rock threatened a bad fall, although it was unlikely to be lethal.

Below and ahead, however, Ray's old junkyard sprawled in seemingly unchanged chaos, but it seemed slightly more overgrown with vegetation and reeked of abandonment in ways it hadn't done before.

Aiden skittered to a halt at the edge, gave a quick glance back and shouted, "Cover me!"

Ray reacted immediately, went down in a crouch and started picking out the drones with his gun, while Aiden climbed down halfway then jumped the rest of the way, softened the landing by dropping into a roll and regained his feet. He gained some distance from the wall and used it to aim at the drones, picked them out of the sky with short, concentrated bursts for the SMG, dropping the drones like over-sized blow-flies.

A taser projectile bit into Ray's back, he felt it, but it wasn't penetrating the shirt, but he wasn't sure how much of that it could take. The drones' were only aiming for the torso, though, so he'd only knock himself out if he stumbled and the taser hit his shoulder or legs.

Under Aiden's cover fire, Ray climbed down the incline, dropped the last few feet and pressed his back against the wall to survey the place.

They had lost time climbing down, even if it wasn't much, but more drones had joined the others, humming in the air above the junkyard, but they were most congealing on Aiden, who had kept moving and dodging, weaving through debris and Ray's old sculptures to make himself a bad target.

Ray watched him only for a moment, ran along the wall and took cover behind a pile of old, metal crates. He leaned his shoulder into the rile and pushed against them until they toppled over in a scream of uncomfortably loud, rusted metal, revealing heavy trapdoor.

He fingered for the phone in his pocket, quickly pulled it out and accessed the old apps to unlock the trapdoor.

"Aiden!" he called and lifted his head to peer over the crates. He immediately had to drop his head again when a taser projectile shot at him. He ducked, raised his gun and shot the drone down.

"How many _are_ there?" he asked aloud, more confused than irritated by their persistence. He still heard the noise of Aiden's SMG, so at least he hadn't gone down yet.

"Aiden!" he shouted again. "Get over here!"

He opened the trapdoor, the room beneath released a musty smell, wet earth and old metal. It was sheathed in darkness.

Aiden dove past him, rolled again, but only came up into a crouch. He gave Ray a frown, but didn't let his attention linger, because the ever increasing swarm of drones had already formed an ominous cloud above them.

Aiden slipped down the hole, hit the ground in the dark and Ray dove after him, snapped his finger on the trigger of the trapdoor. It slammed closed automatically.

"I hope this has a second exit," Aiden said.

"Nope," Ray said, pushed past him and set his phone to function as flashlight, found his away across the old storage space to a wall and the light-switch. It didn't work.

"BCP will be here any minute," Aiden grated. "You'd better have a plan."

"I said I did, didn't I?" Ray waved him off, made his way to the other end of the room, put his phone down and set to start the old generator there. It took several tries, but finally the machine started rumbling, the lights flickered on.

He'd set up the room as a backup command centre, for emergencies not unlike this one. After leaving Pawnee with Aiden all those years ago, the place had been left to its own, probably cleaned out by Blume several times and the room bore the signs of it quite clearly. Blume had, however, not dismantled the place.

A bare desk against a wall had once held his computers. Ray leaned over it to remove the wall panel, then connected it to the switchboard.

Staring down at his phone, he said, "I'm uploading all my data to your phone."

Aiden walked over slowly, allowed Ray access to his phone. He leaned his back against the desk and stretched out one leg casually.

"It's three minutes," he said. "What's going on?"

Ray coughed and straightened, checked the estimated time for the data transfer and nodded to himself.

"I've been thinking of reinstating this place," he said. "Blume's been over it seven times, I've been keeping count, and they pretty much lost interest in it. Last two times, their guys stopped, had a smoke, took a few pictures and left again."

"It doesn't look like you've done much," Aiden frowned with somewhat condescending look around.

Ray snorted, "I haven't, but it's mostly wired up. You remember the sculptures?"

"Yeah, but I don't see how they'd be effective against that swarm of drones."

"That's because you didn't consider drones," Ray announced, grinned slightly when he added, "but I have."

Aiden's expression darkened a little, but he said nothing. Couldn't argue with the truth, could he.

Ray waved a hand in the air vaguely. "There've been design ideas for this since my tenure at Blume, not viable then, not enough space in them for decent cpu, ram and batteries. Couldn't secure the wifi signal for cloud computing, either. Now… well, you've been there."

"Yeah."

Ray cast another glance down at the phone, stepped away from the table and bent down to retrieve a metal box from a shelf nearby. He set it on the table and opened it.

He said, "The sculptures only look like scrap, I've upgraded them with a nano-carbon coating, making them superconductive. Now, when I charge them, they're capable of producing a strong magnetic field. I only tested for a strength of 4 Tesla, but that should be enough to scramble the drones good."

Aiden said nothing, but swiped the Lenses from his eyes and dropped them into the box.

Ray said, "I was going to insulate the control room and get a new terminal installed, but that'll have to wait till next time."

"Next time," Aiden echoed dryly. Ray fished his own Lenses from his pocket and dropped them, glanced at his phone and watched the last seconds count down on his phone. He cut the connection and Aiden put his phone in the box, too.

"All?" Ray asked.

"Binoculars are still in the car, don't carry anything else."

"Okay," Ray said. He took a breath and held it for the entire time it took him to access the app and set it up. The generator rumbled on. It _should_ supply enough power for one burst, but he'd never tried it without linking to the power grid, something he couldn't do from down here.

He activated the sculptures.

It took a moment until they charged up and the only way to tell anything had happened was because the phone in his hand went dead. After another moment, the switchboard burned through and he and Aiden twitched back simultaneously. The generator stuttered and the lights flickered, but in the end, that was all.

A tightness in his chest loosened up unexpectedly, despite the disappointing lack of the sound of drones dropping from the sky. He knew he hadn't been holding his breath all that time, but the relief still came like a blow.

"I liked the explosions better," Aiden commented. He stepped back to the table, gave the smouldering switchboard an assessing glance, but then just pulled the metal box to him to retrieve his equipment.

"You still got a boat?" he asked.

Ray grinned, "Still got a boat."

"Then let's go."

Aiden had to lean into the hatch to get it open, the automatic system was just as dead as everything else.

The drones lay scattered on the ground around the trapdoor, not less ominous than they had been when hovering seemly weightlessly in the air. Ray stepped close to one and picked it up, held it out and turned it in his hand.

He picked up a second and saw Aiden do the same. At least they'd have _something_ to show for their excursion into the lion's den — or the lion's backyard, in any case.

"I'm surprised Blume hasn't been bragging about their new security feature," Aiden said as they walked down the path to the boathouse.

"They certainly like their nasty surprises," Ray agreed. "Maybe not viable in the city. I bet the drones are running some kind of AI, you feed them too much intel, their responses become unpredictable. Blume still needs the goodwill of the people, no one wants to see their ugly side."

He grunted a quiet curse and added, "Almost miss those DedSec kids."

Aiden held his silence, giving Ray a chance to watch the entire tragedy replay before his inner eye again. Blume had been ruthlessly efficient when it took down DedSec, not only got most of their people behind bars — or shot them in "self-defence", as BCP hand-waved these incidents off — Blume had pretty much purged the entire network and began burning out the darknet as a whole. They'd bought Uplink, the company that backed the Grid, the network for fixers and other freelancers. Blume hadn't taken them down yet, but Uplink and the Grid was a useful source of information and no doubt Blume had been shopping there for themselves more than once. Of course, with Blume backing the Grid, it would be hard, if not downright impossible, to recruit anyone for a move against them.

"They know we are coming for them," Ray said.

Aiden sighed and shook his head. "They've known from the start."

"But not in an _abstract,_ now they know we're all over them, gonna be all over my old place again, too, and it'd have been a good base of operations, too."

"Too far out," Aiden said. He was silent again, but then cleared his throat and said, "What do we have now?"

Ray grunted something inaudible, merely shaking his head. Every information gathering foray had just revealed that their position was even more precarious than any of them had originally thought. Blume had been building up to this for years, right under their noses and now they were ready to make their move, leaving Ray and Aiden and everybody else to play catchup and play it badly.

Of course Blume hadn't been able to catch and detain every DedSec activist, but whoever got away was keeping their heads down and even Ray, on far better footing with them than Aiden had ever been, hadn't been able to find any who was willing to help, at least none with enough skill to do it and that was even before the question of trustworthiness had come up.

He glanced over Aiden again, walking silently by his side, but something seemed off. It took a while until Ray identified a very slight limp in Aiden's step.

"You got hurt?" Ray asked. He wasn't surprised to see a spark of irritation cross Aiden's otherwise impassive expression. His jaw tensed and then forcedly relaxed, feigned composure.

Aiden shook his head, "It's fine, bumped into something. Your junkyard lives up to its name."

"Hn," Ray huffed a little. "The chaos is a great source of inspiration."

Aiden chuckled a little, but tried to suppress the limp for the rest of the way. This alone was prove he was holding out on something that Ray was planning to bring back up before he committed to a final charge against Blume. He wanted the truth on the table before that, but perhaps not right now. They had enough to swallow for one day.

A storm in the previous winter had knocked the boathouse askew and Ray had had to prop it up on one side with wooden beams. He saw now, as they approached it that the roof had caved in in one corner and if that wasn't a perfect metaphor for the overall state of things.

As least Ray's speedboat hadn't suffered any damage, protected under a canvas cover. Ray pulled it back, coughed at the dust he kicked up and balled the canvas together in his hand while Aiden opened the garage door, then came back and took a long step across the narrow gap to the boat.

"Hey, can you drive?" Ray asked. "I want to take a look at the drones."

Aiden nodded and slipped into the seat and drove the boat from the boathouse, kicking out a cascading spray of water behind them. The boat swerved unsteadily as the water's currents tucked at it until Aiden got it fully under his control.

Ray sat down beside him, one of the small drones in his lap, inspecting it.

"Holy Jesus on a stick."

Aiden chuckled. "That your final verdict?"

"Only half of it, isn't that what they say?"

"I don't know any 'they'."

"Well, I need my tools to check this thing out thoroughly, but it's the godfather of sophisticated technology. They don't have things like that in Hollywood, if you catch my drift."

"You mean this is science fiction?"

Ray rested a limp hand on top of the drone, leaned his head back and let the wind brush across his face. Aiden was completely right about that and completely wrong, too. It wasn't fiction, it sat right in his lap, it had disabled his car and tried to taser him. Without the insulating property of the shirt, their run would've been over before it began. Blume would be able to gather some data from the encounter, perhaps enough to remove that flaw from their design soon. A simple change in targeting would mean the drones shot at limbs, instead of the protected torso.

"You mean we can't do it," Aiden insisted, voice as rough as ever.

Ray stroked a hand down his beard thoughtfully, unwilling to say it aloud, it was bad enough that Aiden had taken it upon himself to be the naysayer in this entire operation. Aiden's original assessment wasn't true anyway. It was turning out to have been far too optimistic.

Ray said, "I still have a few more tricks. I ain't going until I've tried them all."

Aiden's mood had never recovered after the attack on his home, something more was going on about it, but Ray had a feeling it was personal and Aiden wasn't the sharing type.

Aiden moved his head just slightly, not quite a nod, but an indication he was listening, but he said nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **That magnetic field…** I did some reading, but at the end of the day, I'm just eyeballing this whole thing. A magnetic crane produces about 1 T and an MRI ranges between 0.3 and 3 T, so I think 4 is pretty okay for the most part. I tried looking into if people would feel strong magnetic fields, but I didn't really find much, so I assume magnetic fields of this range wouldn't be noticeable to most people. If that's all bullshit, let me know. This also applies to T-Bone's nano-carbon coating (I was thinking along the lines of fullerenes of some kind, but I can't even pretend to know what I'm talking about here.)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on 31/Oct/2015**


	2. Beauty and the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aiden takes care of an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gunmetal Sky!Aiden is turning out to be a massive asshole. I've never really been into this whole 'likeable character' thing, but he's probably pushing it this time.
> 
> I couldn't figure out what laws "stealing a police chopper" breaks. Indeed, google keeps pointing me to GTA (don't remind me, I hate flying in GTA), some random idiots being chased by choppers and the pros and cons of using the things to fight crime. I'm beginning to think it isn't illegal to steal one of those…
> 
> * * *
> 
>  **Recap:** Back in Firewalker, Jordi rescued Aiden from the top of a burning skyscraper. In the following fight with a UCAV, Jordi was shot and dumped in the ER by Aiden, who then had to beat a hasty retreat. Jordi's further fate remained undisclosed.

"Is everything all right?"

Rasha Heddad realised she'd been asked the question for a third time by now. She had stopped frozen, staring at the message on her phone. She'd been trying to figure out why it was _wrong,_ why it shouldn't be there.

_(Are you going to be home by 9? Clé)_

Clément was her au pair in his eighth month of stay, already trying to laugh off his eventual departure to her nine-year old. Clément was a gift for Rasha's work hours, especially since taking over her mentor's law firm. He was also a gift on all other counts, funny and laid-back, with an interesting repertoire of European cuisine and a gift for languages. According to her son, he also told the best adventure stories in the world.

Clément getting in touch with her throughout the day wasn't unusual, indeed, it was what made her home-life tick like a smooth clock, but something just seemed out of place about the message. Perhaps it was because nine was too early, she'd rarely ever made it, unless there was some special event or emergency. She'd have to leave within the hour if she meant to make it at all. Why would he ask like that?

"Mrs. Heddad?" her colleague repeated. And then, softer, "Rasha?"

She shook her head, looked up and met her colleague's questioning gaze.

"It's fine," she said. "Fine."

She glanced at the tablet and the length of today's to-do list, ran the calculation in her head, then plastered a wan smile over her face. "I'm afraid we've got to cut this short," she said. "I'm going to go home early tonight."

Being the boss had its perks, after all, but she wasn't known to abuse them. Her colleague frowned, but didn't argue, realised that the time would be better spent finishing the current topic before Rasha left.

* * *

She'd texted Clément back, told him she'd be there, but got no further reply, no matter how hard she stared at the display of her phone. She wanted to give him a call to clear things up, but didn't dare. Instead, barely fifteen minutes after his first text, she tried to relax a little into the back of the taxi. If she'd learned nothing in her life at all, she knew to trust her instincts, a sixth sense for danger that came in handy in her work as defence attorney, when dangerous people were her daily bread.

The real-life concierge in her apartment building had been replaced by a digital one, a modern day hologram confined to a raised platform at the centre of the lobby. It's facial recognition had never malfunctioned, according to all the official records. If your face was not in the database, if you weren't a guest or a delivery person, you never got upstairs. Rasha wondered how reliable the official records were.

This evening, Rasha felt the loss of an actual human person, though, as she approached the thing to check in if there'd been anything out of the ordinary with her condo.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" the concierge asked sweetly.

"No, thank you."

A human, she'd have asked if they'd noticed anything, but what would the machine even tell her? Out of the ordinary meant out of its programme parameters and it had no useful responses for that. If Blume was running true AIs, Rasha didn't know, but this guy here certainly wasn't one of them.

She stalked away from it to the elevator. The concierge had already called it when she'd walked in, but it still took a miniscule second before the doors opened, too long for her nerves and she caught herself tapping her foot impatiently.

She looked at her phone again, no message from Clément. She thought about telling him she was almost there, but refrained, it was only a few moments.

She forced her breathing to calm, let the sense of vertigo and acceleration wash through her as the elevator took her upwards. She'd know what was going on soon enough. In the last moments, she tried to tell herself it was going to be harmless and her work had made her paranoid. One look too many behind the curtain, one murderer too many, one devious Club member, one smart-mouthed fixer… it was all it was, Clément probably had just made some great dinner as a surprise for her…

The elevator door opened and she walked through the corridor in a trance, the carpet softening her footsteps, made her feel like pushing through water and the polished black of her door threw back a vague shadow as her reflection. The tiny camera scanned in her face and unlocked the door smoothly.

She walked in and the first thing she realised was that there was no scent of cooking, indeed, no discernible sound at all, no music or tv. The light was on in the hallway and spilling from the open-plan kitchen and living room, she spotted the edge of the kitchen counter just ahead, where Clément stood oddly poised in the doorway.

On the left, halfway between the entrance and the kitchen, the door to her son's room stood open, light coming through.

"Rasha," Clément started, clearly wanting to say more but not finding the right words. His eyes were wide open, too much so, darting into every shadowed corner and his body had the tension of an animal, but she wasn't sure if he was poised to spring or flee.

Before she could ask him anything a man stepped into the hallway, quietly switched off the light in her son's room and levelled a heavy gaze on Rasha.

Part of her recognised him, but it was overruled by a much more primordial instinct. You did not want to see a stranger — _any_ stranger — leave your son's bedroom like that.

She didn't realise she'd been moving until she was right in front of him — too tall like that, too solid — she looked away from him, registered distantly that he took a gracious step back from her, giving her free access to her son's room, pushing past him.

Her heart missed a beat in the moment before the lights came on. She thought she saw the brightness flood the room too slowly, outline the mess on the rug, a mountain of Lego and what seemed to be a half-finished robot, drawing utensils strewn over the desk in a corner. An armchair was pulled close to the bed, a book discarded in its seat, a lion-headed prince looking back at her.

Her son crunched open his eyes unhappily, blinked a few times as he was yanked back from sleep right after he'd dived into it.

"Mom?" he murmured.

It clicked through her mind, glacially slow, but she retained enough sense of reality to know it was only a second. She switched the lights back off immediately.

"Just wanting to say goodnight," she said, hoped her son was too sleepy to comprehend her strained tone.

"Okay," he murmured and seemed already asleep again.

She turned around sharply, but contained herself until she'd stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her.

Aiden Pearce had given her some more space, stood in the centre of the hallway with his hands casually in the pockets of his jeans, looking back at her in steely composure.

She felt the bones of her jaw unclench, just this side of breaking.

"I know who you are," she said, fully aware it was an accusation more than a statement.

"We need to talk," he said.

"Yes," she agreed and took a step toward him. "Start explaining what you were doing in my son's room."

She saw a flicker of something in his gaze, but it was gone too fast for her to identify. He shrugged.

"Reading a bedtime story," he said. He glanced to the side, toward Clément and said, "Didn't I?"

Clément hesitated, started to nod in agreement, then stopped. His posture betrayed just how much Pearce intimidated him, but he found new resolve when he met Rasha's gaze.

Clément said, "Do I call the police?"

Pearce made a sound that was almost a sigh, his attention returned to Rasha, pressed down on her like a physical weight, just waiting for her decision. Waiting for her to recognise the scare tactic he'd used, letting her rage against it in the privacy of her mind and hate that she'd never dare risk her son's wellbeing for anything.

"Not yet," Rasha said to Clément, a compromise between her pride and Pearce's safeguards, no doubt he had more in place than she'd seen.

She looked at Pearce, "Yes, let's talk."

She walked past him, squeezed Clément's arm reassuringly as she passed, smiled slightly for him and said, "It'll be fine, I'll handle it. Just keep out of it, okay?"

He hesitated, searching her face for any sign she wanted him to do something else than what she was saying, but neither Clément nor she herself were a match for Pearce, even with surprise on their side and calling the police would make the situation just more untenable than it already was.

Clément nodded, _"D'accord,_ okay." He looked briefly at Pearce, then said, "I'll stay here."

He passed by Pearce as he walked to the small bench along the wall, sat down stubbornly right at the edge of it, close to her son's bedroom door.

Rasha ignored Pearce's slight shrug, but tensed up when she walked ahead of him through the living room and into her study. Just having him where she couldn't see him made the small hair at the back of her neck stand up, the skin prickling.

She rounded her desk, glad to have the heavy piece of furniture between them, watched him stop and cast as slow glance down on the chairs in front of her desk as if he considered the pros and cons of sitting down. He elected to remain standing.

"I'm sorry," he said, the one thing she hadn't expected him to say. She wondered if she believed it, sincere though it had sounded.

"I couldn't contact you another way."

She wanted to sit down, her knees didn't feel too steady, but she suspected it would put her on the back-foot even more. She thought about what he'd said.

"No one's stupid enough to bug a _law firm,"_ she pointed out. "Or tap my phone. If anything, my home is less safe."

He smiled, thinly and arrogantly, shook his head. "There's no legal way to use the information gathered like that, I know. Doesn't make it safe. Fewer people here, fewer smart devices and we're high up. I can control this environment. In your office? No."

She considered it, realised she would have to take him at his word. The thought of being monitored in her office was disquieting. She'd suspected it, like anyone with eyes to see, but Pearce's casual confirmation of it was still a blow she hadn't expected.

"You're here because of my John Doe," she said. "He hasn't been talking. Not even to me."

Pearce glanced away for a moment, then said, "How is he?"

"You don't know?" she asked in honest surprise. "He was transferred to Palin a week ago. He's recovering well from his injury. I could help him better if he talked to me."

"What are they charging him with?"

"Well, he stole a police helicopter," she said, raising her eyebrows. Surely he'd been there? "He flew it into a no-fly zone during a real or at least suspected terror attack. Then _you_ landed that helicopter on the parking lot of Holy Cross hospital."

"That's all?"

She frowned. "That's enough. The investigation is ongoing, but the police can't seem to find much on him. I've had people look into it, too, but so far? Not much. Not even a name, not much of a digital footprint. He's not in any of Blume's databases either. He's a fixer, that's obvious, and a good one, too. But police can pin him to few concrete cases."

"You're his lawyer, get him off."

"I'm not a magician," she snapped. "Your friend… I assume that's what he is? Well, your friend has done everything right, in terms of staying under the radar, but then he did that little stunt with the helicopter and tied himself to you. Nothing I'll say can ever change that. And yours is the head everyone wants on their wall."

Pearce thought for a moment. "He's taking the fall for Millenium Point."

"What did you expect?" Rasha snorted an unimpressed laugh. "No one seems able to figure out what happened, but it's making no one look good. Blume and their BCP, the police and all other authority. People died, the building is in ruins. Of course they need a scapegoat. If you want to surrender yourself, be my guest."

He didn't even answer that last, tired line, she hadn't expected him to, but she saw a slight softening in his expression, perhaps brought on by some memory he hadn't completely processed yet.

She decided to push, she owed him no courtesey.

"You where there, you were at the heart of it. What happened?"

He surprised her with a slight laugh, self-depreciating, but not entirely without human warmth. "I was just living there."

"That's all?" she said, chuckled at the repetition despite the situation. It seemed to briefly put them on eye-level.

Pearce took a breath, "It's all you're going to believe. Your client had nothing to do with it. He just helped me out and he took a bullet for his trouble."

He took a step forward, to the edge of the desk and the distance seemed to shrink away.

"The investigators won't find the truth about what happened at Millenium Point, because they're not meant to. But you can work with that."

"I don't quite follow," she said slowly, though she suspected she did.

"Well, if what your client says isn't convenient, perhaps it'd be better to let him go?"

"The people you mean, they're powerful. How do I know they won't just silence him?"

"Because you'll make sure of it. Make everyone understand that killing him would kick up just more dirt. Letting him off with a lenient sentence, that's the way to go. He'll stay quiet, no one else needs to go under in that disaster. I can give you the ammunition. But I want you to give your John Doe a message from me."

"Which is?"

Pearce studied her face and she wondered what he was seeing there, if he could tell just how deeply unsettled she was. Of course she'd known he was involved in some way. Her client had stolen a police helicopter for him, Pearce himself had carried him into the ER. She had seen the footage in flawless HD. It had been the first time in a long while to get a reading of Pearce from Profiler. The first clear picture in years, but it was nothing compared to the real man.

The mystery of him might, to some people, hold a certain fascination. The reality of him, standing just a few feet away, at the heart of her home, was something far less romantic.

"Tell him he doesn't have to protect me," Pearce answered. "If he needs to sell me out, tell him to do it. Fingers are pointing at me anyway, his won't make a difference."

"How much does he know about you?"

"Less than he thinks, more than I'd like," he sighed, seemed amused at some private joke or memory she wouldn't get him to share.

"He's your responsibility," Pearce said and the sinister undertone kept sliding back in, wrapping around her nerve ends, pitch-black and choking and she realised why he really was here, even before he said it.

"Something bad happens to him, I'll have to come back."

Rasha felt her throat close down with sudden dread, acutely aware of her son sleeping so peacefully so very close. She put a hand on the desk and leaned forward, fixed Pearce with her gaze, made no effort to hide her fear, because she knew he must have seen it too often to be fooled. She made no effort to hide her determination, either.

"I know why came here," she said and had to laugh at the realisation. "It's the oldest tactic in the book. To show you can, isn't it? To show that you can walk right into my son's room any time you like."

She pressed her lips together, tried to control her breathing. The accusation hadn't left a scratch in Pearce's facade as he waited for her to finish, allowed her imagination to run wild, create scenarios far worse than anything he could ever envision himself.

"What happens if he dies?" she asked. "You said it, he's a target for… whoever is behind everything. If they decide to silence him, or if the judge doesn't listen… I cannot control all that. What then? What are you going to do? Come back here and slaughter all of us?"

Pearce seemed to contemplate the possibility, no hint of amusement in him now. Somewhere, she knew, there had to be the seams he'd used to stitch himself together like this. No man just woke up one morning and _was,_ no, the man before her had spent decades _becoming._ Becoming _this_ , she had only been given a glimpse of it and it was already more than she wanted to see.

"No," he said finally. " _You_ won't die. _"_

He moved, only to pull his hand out of his pocket, but she flinched anyway, felt herself caught and exposed, as if the moment had already come. Too many variables were in this, she couldn't ever protect her John Doe, not if all the forces were gunning for him in the way Pearce had implied.

Without looking down, Pearce tapped something on the phone and she was distantly aware of her own phone announcing it had received a message, the tiny sound working itself into he consciousness without its attributing significance.

"I've texted you the link to a cloud storage," Pearce said. "Use it."

"I can't guarantee anything," she said tonelessly. "You know that, right? Putting pressure on me… that's not…"

She faltered. He knew all that and he'd come anyway, he'd decided it would be she he leant on and it was already done. Nothing she said would make him retreat now. He didn't care that she couldn't do what he demanded of her.

Pearce made no reply, he certainly had no reason to alleviate the fears he'd so carefully come to instil.

"Tell your client…" Pearce started and she didn't know the name of the emotion in his voice just then.

He paused, seemed at a loss for words for just a second and the searing weight of his gaze left her for a moment before it returned to her. Another glimpse, perhaps, but as far she was concerned it was too little and too late.

He said, "Tell him _thank you_."

It took a long time for her mind to settle, after he'd left. It took the weeks and months through the trial and the sides of her she hadn't known she possessed, using the information Pearce had given her.

It took the look on her client's face, who otherwise carried himself with a distant, sardonic amusement, but he looked unguarded for just a moment. It took all that to realise that Pearce hadn't really been saying _thank you_. He'd been saying _good-bye_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that, I finally figured out what happened to Jordi after Firewalker. Kind of.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on 31/Oct/2016**


	3. Dave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's a hacker without a network?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Recap:** In the story Black Magic, BlackMage is a decoy persona Aiden used to run. Marcus Brenks, Damien's son joined DedSec at some point before 2022 and the events of Harbinger. Marcus was brainwashed using a variant of bellwether. He was killed by Aiden in Firewalker.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **EDIT:** Thanks to Ubi springing that fucking WD 2 on me like this, I had to change the name of " _Josh_ Wyland" to "Derek Wyland" to avoid confusion. Thanks for that. Assholes.

He's had two lives, once, but the world moved on and now he's got to count himself lucky to still have _one_ of them left, but it's not a good feeling. He's living on borrowed time, every morning when he gets up, he wonders if this is going to be his last. And every evening when he gets home, he wonders if he'll be allowed to sleep throughout the night or if it will be interrupted by a raid. Corporate Police breaking down his door and dragging him from his bed.

He doesn't actually know what's happened to the others. He's only watched them disappear, first in one fell swoop the night Millennium Point was set ablaze and then, in the days that followed, one after the other went dark. He likes to believe not all of them were caught, that some found their way underground, took off their masks and threw away their phones. Perhaps they're biding their time, ready to regroup and resurrect. Perhaps their's, like his, safety measures were good enough.

He doesn't _know_ , and besides, what good does it do? Blume has scattered DedSec, whether its members are in jail or dead or merely hiding doesn't seem to make that much of a difference.

It's hard to think, some days. DedSec is gone and he's just an IT engineer at Blume, who would be broken if anyone ever found out about that other life.

He thinks there is some irony in things, though. He's worked his way through the rank and file at Blume, always mindful of how much of his skills he truly showed, careful to be good, but not too good. He's reliable, deeply apolitical. Everyone knows, Derek Wyland is no revolutionary, but if you want to get some tricky piece of coding done, he's your man. You can set him to work on bellwether and he'll treat it like nothing other than a challenging project. Derek Wyland does not _care._

Derek Wyland does not ask what happened to his predecessors, not because it scares him, but because it's unimportant to him. _Someone_ obviously had this job before him and now they don't. It's all that matters to him. He likes to sit behind his monitor, but he's not dangerous, not like the people before him. He's no Raymond Kenney, unfortunately not as dead and buried as everyone would like to think. He's no Angela Balik, either, whose rotting corpse — or so they say — has yet to turn up.

Derek Wyland is just _that guy._

Derek Wyland thinks he should get an Academy Award for his performance.

Lately, it's been starting to break down, but it might just be his mental state eroding. He's under constant pressure. Any day, he thinks, any moment, it could happen. Someone at Blume applies the right filters to his private data, to his movement profiles, to his online searches. He's good, he's better than Blume knows, but he's not perfect. Somewhere in the twisting paths of the internet, there's a line of bread crumbs connecting him to DedSec. Somewhere out there, there's the one treacherous message that calls him Dave.

So what's he to do? He can't go looking for that information himself. If there's no alert raised, surely that'll do it. And what would he do if he found it? Erase information from the internet? You'd have to laugh, but it feels a lot like crying.

He can't wait it out, either, perhaps he should, but he can't. His nerves are not glass fibre, they can't take the load. He makes a mistake instead. That's how he thinks of it. A mistake. In a few months, he thinks it will come back and bite him, it'll tear him down and he'll wish to a god he does not believe in that he hadn't done it, but foresight doesn't work like that for him.

He takes all the precautions he can think of, he makes sure to deviate from his routines so slightly, the monitoring software won't notice. There's always _some_ variability in people's behaviour, there's always a level of irrationality. He's programmed part of it himself and improved the results. Sometimes people make no sense, but it's hard for a perfect logic system to account for it. Wriggle room. He think of Raymond Kenney and Angela Balik and the other Daves, he thinks of what DedSec was all about and wonders if 'wriggle room' is all that's going to be left of personal freedom when this revolution is through.

He starts reaching out into the depth of the internet. Someone has to be there, someone still willing to buy what he's got to offer. Someone he can reconnect with, perhaps — he has moments like that — he can start again, become someone again who can make their voices heard. Perhaps there'll be more than 'wriggle room'.

He's never liked fixers, mercenaries and hitmen, the lot of them, loyal to the money they are paid. Ironically, it's their lack of affiliation that's meant they come out of the great changes — not unscathed, exactly, but by the end of it all, he thinks fixers will still be fixers. There'll always been a market for their services, not even Blume wants them eradicated, they'll leave a shadow world, part a distraction and part a convenience, both useful for different things.

It doesn't mean individual fixers aren't going down in the fray, or that some of them pick an affiliation and stick with it. On the whole, though, the fixers make it to the other side. He rather hates them for that, especially.

A few days ago, his car broke down. It's not _quite_ just broken, he's fiddled with it a little in the privacy of his own garage. He thinks if he exposes himself to be approached, potential allies will find an opportunity to do so. He's well paid, but he's Regular Joe enough to take the L when his car isn't up to the task. It's something he would do, so there he is.

It's an old L train, chattering loudly and on bad suspension. They are only still running on a handful of lines, but this one leads right past a bookstore where he likes to browse, so it makes sense he's in it.

He leans his head into the window and lets his gaze pass over the sunset lit cityscape, a moment of quiet. Whatever bad things will happen, they'll do at a station, not while the L is still moving. He's _safe_ while the L is still moving.

Someone is sitting across from him, the whole width of the aisles between them and he doesn't at first realise why his attention shifts at all. His mind is in so many places at once, scattered all over, always looking for the trap, so the woman across from him, staring at him intently cannot escape him.

He gives her a frown, perhaps too much already, betraying his guilt. She's young, beautiful if she wants to be, short-cropped hair, bleached blonde in contrast to her dark skin. She's dressed like the street in a cheap B-movie, dreamt up to look like a cross between a hooker and a businesswoman by someone who's never really seen either.

"Hi, Dave," she says, voice surprisingly full as she arches her head back a little until it touches the glass window at her back.

A tiny countdown starts to tick at the back of his mind, the time until the L reaches the next station, the time when he won't be _safe_ for a little while.

"Don't panic," she continues and he's pretty sure he doesn't look panicked, because he doesn't feel it. She's intriguing, but he can't make sense of her.

"I'm BlackMage," she adds and gives a wave with a lace-gloved hand.

He has to laugh at it, even through the layer of makeup on her face and the distracting timbre of her voice, he knows she cannot be that old.

"You started early," he points out. "What were you? Ten?"

She laughed, a deep, full-throated laugh, irritatingly genuine.

She shrugs, drifts her gaze away from him to study something above and behind him. He doesn't need to look to know she's staring at the cameras there, studying them like insects under glass.

"You think BlackMage is only one guy," she says, chuckles a little and amends, "One girl, one whatever? You really do? Dave? How many of _you_ are there?"

_Just the one,_ he thinks sourly.

He doesn't like her saying that name, but he doesn't know why it would. BlackMage, Dave, DedSec, the vigilante, it's all the same in the end. Throw these terms around enough and maybe the filters started considering you spam. It was a surprisingly popular hobby among certain circles, trying to figure out how to trip up the system and raise an alert over nothing.

"It's safe to talk," she says. "For a little while. I'm just the messenger."

He watches her, guesses he has to the next stop, no more, but he's tired of jumping through hoops without knowing if they are there at all.

"Who sent you?"

She smirked. "Can't you guess?"

He frowns, feels the expression dig into his face and stay there.

"If its safe to talk, then talk," he says. "Don't give me the runaround, I've had a long day."

"A long few weeks, I imagine," she offers and there's something close to gentleness in her now. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, one over the other, aims the silver-tipped heel of her left shoe at him and wags it playfully.

"It's been like that for all of us."

"Who. Sent. You."

"Raymond Kenney," she says, after a tiny hesitation that betrays the lie.

He isn't sure why she would be lying, though. She's not Blume, she's a hacker, pretending to be that prankster BlackMage, even if she took over the mantle from someone else. It could _all_ be a lie, but to what end?

"No," he states.

"It's true," she says, pulls a grimace. "Just… not directly."

From one moment to the next, it's too much, he's too tired and too annoyed and too… everything.

"It's the vigilante, right?" he just shrugs. "I don't care anymore. DedSec declared him persona non grata, but we have no DedSec anymore. He and Kenney are tight anyway, everyone knows it."

He fixes her sharply, trying to skewer her with his gaze, he doesn't expect to impress her much. He's a washed out hacker without resources and his fortune hanging by a thread. He's a Blume IT engineer and he's the enemy. It doesn't matter which she sees, neither will intimidate her.

"What does he want?"

She takes her time again, glances to the side and stares out the windows as if there's anything interesting there.

"A way in," she says then, turns her face back to him, expression serious for once.

"Into Blume," he has to say it aloud to make it real.

"You're pretty high up," she points out. "No one knows your dark secret, yet, but it's waiting to be discovered. Why not capitalise while you still can?"

"Because it's his fault and I'm vindictive," he offers.

It's becoming a well-known saying among former hackers. Millennium Point… the turning point, a before and after, because that night everything came crashing down even while the skyscraper remained standing.

Marcus Brenks was the real mistake, though, the true turning point. No doubt brilliant, but too insane from the start, too determined, impossible to control, but devious about it. So much worse than Defalt in many ways, because Defalt at least you saw coming, but Marcus was a different animal, able and willing to play the long game. And then it all went up in flames, came crashing back down and he's left alone, wondering if it's worth picking up the pieces.

"Or because you're a coward."

"Nah," he dismisses it. "Don't care, you can't guilt-trip me into anything, I'm too fucking tired for that shit."

He thinks about it, makes up his mind in the time it takes for a disembodied voice to announce the next stop. BlackMage gets ready to leave, slips to her feet and holds her balance despite the heels and ridiculous attire on the shaking train.

"Is that your answer?" she asks. "For real?"

He looks at her, sees the doubt there, as she's searching for something to say and he likes that he's managed to unsettle her at least a little. He lets her doubt, because it's so hard to remember what certainty felt like.

"Oh no no," he says as if it's obvious. "Of course I'll help you. But it's your funeral."

"You're in, it's all that counts," she points out, face lighting up. The train rattled to a halt and she gave him a conspiratorial wink before she turns and steps to the door in the moment before the train stops and the doors open and she steps out.

* * *

She watches as the L departs the station, then casually wanders down the platform, finds the stairs to get back down to street level. It's never been a good neighbourhood, even the ever-present ctOS cameras don't make you feel safe in this area. Here, they are merely voyeuristic, just watching, just recording, documenting the dark sides of humanity to use against them later.

The people in power still know how to trick the system. They buy their moments off camera, they cheat and lie and trick and get away with it. ctOS isn't corrupt in the way other systems are, but it's never going built a Utopia and besides, Utopia always seemed rather dystopian to her personally.

She stalks over to the car parked in the shadow across the street and slips into the passenger seat in the dark, angles her shoulder into the seat so she can look the vigilante over, making no attempt to hide her scrutiny.

"I think he's good to go," she reports.

"You sure?" the vigilante asks. One hand rests loosely on the lower rim of the steering wheel, fingerless gloves leave his fingers stand out pale in the dark, like bare bones. The phone rests in his other hand, display darkened as he views the world through the lenses.

He barely looks at her, but she's learned through the years not to assume he misses anything.

"Pretty sure, but he's not on top of it. Looks he hasn't slept for a few weeks. I don't know… you don't ask me these things, but I don't think he's going to hold up."

The vigilante grunted noncommittally. "Question of time," he says and the low rumble of his voice sends a pleasant shiver down her spine. "He doesn't need to hold up forever, just long enough."

He shifts a little and looks at her, tilts his head and a distant streetlight finds his face, does nothing to soften the harsh edges of it and the shadows linger around his eyes and down the sides of his mouth.

She's not _strictly speaking_ that attracted to older men. She's not _not_ attracted to them. It's… well, it depends on the man. Sometimes on the woman, too. Sometimes merely on her mood. The vigilante, however, is never _not_ tantalising.

"Do I keep an eye on him?" she offers.

"No," he shakes his head, thinks about it. "Gives ctOS another pattern to analyse, can't burn him before we got in. Keep away."

He fixes her from narrowed eyes. "I mean it, no one goes to him twice."

She huffs, or at least pretends to, and slides a little down in the seat.

"Okay, whatever you say," she agrees. She's not exactly _angry_ at the decision. It's not like Blume wouldn't take her down if they got wind of her. She's not a big fish, but Blume's got a fine net and a reputation for not sparing the by-catch.

"You know," she starts. "You need to kick back and relax once in a while, too." She waves a hand in the air. "Forget all about this, for an hour or so."

She looks at him and smiles, "Would do you good."

She's surprised by the apparition of humour in his expression, a smirk creasing his face. So she assumes she's not going to instantly lose her hand when she slides it up his knee and over the hard muscle of his thigh.

If there's a reaction he keeps in check, he's doing it too quickly for her to do more then merely surmise its presence. She smiles, knows where this will go if she keeps it up and turns her groping hand into a more friendly pat before she takes it back.

"You ever up for that," she says casually. "You know where to find me."

The vigilante quirks an eyebrow up, seems more amused than enraged and she'll count that as a win. It's the most she's ever gotten from him anyway and it's beginning to be a game of sorts. She's not so starved for affirmation she'll take his rejection to heart and she's never quite sure he really isn't interested either. It'd do him good, loosen up a bit, but she'd rather keep his goodwill than get laid. He's a special case like that.

His expression settles back into a faint scowl, drilling into her gaze and he says, "Actually, it's better I don't."

When she doesn't react, he adds, "Know where to find you."

He leans away from her, takes both hands to the wheel. "You should get out of Chicago while you can."

He smirks again, just a little. "Clean up your act, give them no reason to look."

"Hmm," she comments faintly. Thinks of the jokes she could make, about liking an audience, about being a damn fine sight to behold anyway, but the impulse just withers away.

She sidles forward in her seat, opens the door and gets out. Her heels click on the hard asphalt, louder than the quiet humming of the vigilante's electric car.

Her phone announces a money transfer. She knows she needs to take care of it soon, hide the money and its trails as well she can, but she has a few moments to herself before she does. She enjoys the night and the cool air as she turns away and walks in the shadow beneath the L tracks, realising she plays a small part in all of this and when the vigilante talks about burning people, she's never sure if she's one of the ones he cares about at all.

Sometimes she wonders if _he_ even remembers who is who in all of this and she's just a little glad it wouldn't be her headache to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Revised on 31/Oct/2016**


	4. Widow's Walk – Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cracks are beginning to show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Everyone's age for your convenience:** Aiden's 52, Frewer 55 and Mia is 30. If T-Bone's Pawnee profile is correct, he should be 66 (I… think I should've calculated that before I made him appear in Quaint Old World, what a tough old fart.)
> 
>  **Also note:** The name of _Josh_ Wyland from Gunmetal Sky: Dave was changed to _Derek_. Thanks for that, Ubi.
> 
>  **Recap/Recurring characters:** Mia used to be Aiden's protége in _Femme Fatale_ and _Sucker's Game_. Cox was a bounty hunter after Aiden in Sucker's Game, she blackmailed Mia. Jordi crippled her by shooting out both her kneecaps, then Aiden stuffed her in a trunk for a few hours. As punishment, Aiden saddled Mia with the injured Cox and abandoned them on a parking lot outside Chicago.

"… people want a _God,_ right? Or… no, it's more like religion. Another replacement ideology. It's people getting exhausted and wanting the easy answers for once. You know? Just once. Someone's in charge. Someone knows why things happen. Someone _made_ things happen. There's a point to it. Sure, that point may be malicious, but at least there's some kind of sense," Mia said, pacing on the sun-dappled plaster of the plaza. "Just take a look at politics these past twenty years, crazies, demagogues and all of them corrupt to the bone. All of them lying through their teeth about things no one can control anyway. People are scared, they feel like they've lost control of their lives and the world's going down the drain anyway. Or take the weather. Floods on one end of the country, but there's a draught on the other, like climate's doing it out of _spite…"_

"I'd believe that," Cox interjected mildly, giving Mia a slow look, but then returned her attention to tracing little patterns on the suede of her sleeve. At any rate, Mia barely paused for breath at the interruption.

"We don't go a week without some new terror threat, real or imagined," Mia continued. "We don't go a weekend without some right or left wing _nut_ chipping away at civil liberties, all under the guise of fighting unemployment or terrorism or… shit like that. _I_ can't even keep track of it. Nothing's ever _safe,_ or reliable. It's all always moving. And smack in the middle of all that you've got Blume's whole range of apps. You know what they do?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"They make life _easy._ They tell you where to shop, what to buy, when the traffic's low, when the weather's good, what your calorie intake is. They even tell you what movie you should see and what shirt you should wear when you go on your first date with the guy Blume's dating app selected for you. People are just flocking to it. Most services are free! Why would you not use them!"

Mia stopped pacing, put her hands in her hips and stared down on Cox on the bench in front of her. "Well, that's because when Blume comes to collect that bill, we're all paying."

Cox narrowed her eyes behind her sunglasses, feigned to suppress a yawn.

"And yet here you are, shouting on top of your lungs," she pointed out. "But no sniper has taken a shot."

Mia leaned forward. "That's because I'm not dangerous. No one listens. DedSec has been on that bandwagon for years and I swear, the moment they touched a nerve… we both know what happened. But even that, it didn't matter in the end, because the majority of people are still just looking for the easy way. I don't even know I can blame them, I mean, look at the world. But… "

She huffed, then deflated a little under Cox's deeply unimpressed demeanor. Mia dropped her arms by her side. "It's just irritating," she added defensively. "Sometimes, just a little. It can't be just me, can it?"

Cox's expression didn't soften, with a lopside sneer she said, "How much have we earned through the years because of that?"

"That's what makes it even more irritating," Mia said. She took a few steps forward and dropped inelegantly down on the bench by Cox's side. The move made Cox's crutches slide and Mia snapped back up to catch them. "I always thought I was going to be the good guy."

"You're a hacker," Cox pointed out. "Working with a bounty hunter. If you want to become an activist, find yourself a different partner."

"Hey, if you want to break up with me, just say so."

Cox chuckled dryly, "No no, you've got it backward, if _you_ want to break up with _me,_ you should say…"

Mia's phone buzzed.

She sighed, long-suffering, but flicked her lenses on. Caller ID wasn't hidden, sparing her the trouble of doing the legwork herself, the number flickered up, then the app took hold and resolved the number to its registered owner.

_Paerce._

Mia froze, disoriented, because the world had unexpectedly been knocked entirely out of whack. Her own words grated in her memory, of how much easier life was when at least some things were under your control. Well, Blume was certainly not controlling this one…

"What's wrong?" Cox asked.

Without answering, Mia held out her phone and turned the display to Cox, where the same information was displayed.

"So?" Cox asked uncomprehending, but Mia saw the spark of subconscious recognition.

"It's was a typo, on my old phone, from when I was still in Chicago," Mia explained tonelessly. "It's Pearce."

The response in Cox was immediate. All warmth, even the boredom of familiarity, fell away from her, replaced with a nearly ten year old history she was reminded of every single time she wanted to walk even one step and every time she turned the lights out or a door closed.

"Aren't you going to answer?" Cox asked, her voice wiped clean of all inflection.

Mia shook her head, fighting an odd sense of disorientation, mental vertigo. The phone had been buzzing for almost two minutes now, some override Mia didn't know to stop the call from going to voicemail. At least Pearce had learned patience, she thought wryly.

She picked up the call.

"Yes?"

 _"Do you know the_ Casa di Claudia _?"_

It was a pizza place, not far from the plaza. Mia realised she'd been scanning the open space in front of her, looking at the people there as if they all were wearing masks and just waiting for their chance to tear them off.

"Y-yes."

_"Go there now."_

He hung up before Mia worked through her surprise to phrase anything resembling a coherent question. The disconnect icon flashing in her field of vision seemed like it was trying to hypnothise her and Mia flicked it away with an impatient gesture of her thumb across the display of her phone.

"What does he want?" Cox asked without any attempt to hide her contempt.

"I have no idea," Mia said. She picked herself up without thinking about what she was doing, stopped on her tracks and turned to Cox. "Are you home later?"

"Maybe," Cox said. She paused for a moment, her voice strained, but she added, "Why don't you come by?"

"Thank you," Mia said and meant it.

She could walk to the _Casa di Claudia,_ just a few minutes, barely enough to clear her head, but she thought it would be best if she got things sorted before she arrived. Who knew what was waiting for her?

After Pearce had dumped her outside Chicago with an almost dead woman in the the trunk, Mia had been certain she'd never see him again. Not unless she accidentally or intentionally one of the rules he'd set. She hadn't, she was sure of it, She'd never dare. But now it was him who contacted her. 

For a split second she wondered if it had been him at all, not some decoy, some trap to lure her out, but who would know about that typo? Such an irrelevant thing, even under torture, how would someone think of it? She'd left the phone behind in Chicago, she assumed Pearce himself had taken care of it and he'd know how to hide his tracks. No, she decided, but also because she didn't have many other options. _No_. This was the real deal and Pearce wanted something from her.

Unlike Cox, Mia's initial anger at Pearce's treatment had mellowed out over the years. He hadn't been nearly as cruel as he could've been, he hadn't really done her as much damage as she had thought, standing so lost on that parking lot all those years ago.

In the end, it had even turned out well for her, though the signs had been bad all around. Saving Cox's life by driving her to nearest hospital, even though Mia knew there was no way she could talk her way out of it, that had taken more courage than anything in her life ever had. They'd saved Cox, but not quite her mobility, her knees too shattered and left broken for too long. When the cops inevitably showed up, Mia simply refused to say anything, let them grope around in the dark, trying to fit the pieces together. Pearce had wiped all evidence of Mia's existence in Chicago, reduced her to a name and birthdate without history and without anything for the cops to work with. It was impossible to pin Cox's injuries on Mia, too, despite the circumstances.

And when Cox regained consciousness, she had the presence of mind to refuse to testify in any way. At the time, Mia didn't know if it was shock, or if it was fear of Pearce, or if Cox even in that state, played her own game. It turned out, it was a bit of all of these. When the cops eventually brought her to court anyway, because they couldn't turn up any other culprit, the judge found the evidence laughable and, somewhat reluctantly, let her go. Which was when Cox had offered a partnership. Or rather, _demanded_ it, by way of compensation.

"You can work off your debt," Cox had said.

"I saved your life," Mia had pointed out. "Isn't that enough?"

"Not nearly."

The _Casa di Claudia_ appeared in front of her, just around the corner in a side-street. Business was slow, the middle of the afternoon. When Mia's eyes adjusted to the shadowed inside, she saw only two guests, two young men sharing a table and deep in conversation.

No sign of Pearce, Mia wasn't sure if she was disappointed or if she should've expected it.

"Can I help you?" a waiter asked and smiled at her.

"I… I'm meeting a friend," Mia said, stumbling over the words. The waiter's expression brightened at recognition.

"Ah, yes, the gentleman had to leave early," he explained. "But he left you something. Wait a second."

He took a few steps behind the bar counter, bent down and pulled out a small white paper bag, which he handed to Mia with the same clueless smile.

Mia's glanced over the label imprinted on the bag, some luxury cosmetics store she'd never bothered with. She raised an eyebrow, but filed the fact away for later dissection.

She remembered to give the waiter a smile, flicked her thumb across the button that had sprung up when she'd walked through the door and transferred a small tip to him. His face lit up again. No doubt Pearce had already tipped, if only because Pearce entirely operated on the duality of bribery and coercion.

She took the bag and stole a quick look inside. A small cube, clearly gift-wrapped by the store that sold it. She resisted the urge to tear off the wrapping and find out what the hell this all was about, but every suspicious bone in her body advised caution. She didn't have the first clue what this was about and she'd rather handle anything of Pearce's in an environment she could be reasonably sure she controlled.

She considered heading home, but went to Cox's condo instead. It was somewhat more remote and higher up in a high-rise and Mia trusted the more recent insulation somewhat more than her own, more ramshackle one.

Cox let her in without commenting, but gave the bag a quizzical look. In her condo, she leant only on one crutch, hobbled over to her desk and lowered herself into the chair, and leaned the cruch against it.

"Pearce wasn't there," Mia explained, even though Cox only huffed and rotated her chair towards the screen.

Mia dropped herself in the couch, pulled up the interface on her lenses and scanned the place for any new or unidentified signals. When she found none, she pulled the gift from the bag. She scanned it, too, and again found nothing.

"He's leaving you gifts?" Cox asked sardonically. "So… he's gone from sadistic murderer to creepy stalker. Is that an improvement, do you think? Or more of a downgrade, in his very special case?"

She'd turned her chair back toward the room, leaned an elbow on the table and eyed Mia from sharp eyes.

As Mia turned the cube in her hand, Cox added darkly, "I hope it's one of his testicles. I _seriously_ hope it hurt when he cut it off."

Mia rolled her eyes. "Come off it," she demanded and Cox snorted.

Mia finally ripped open the wrapping, dropped it on the floor, only to stare at the packaging of a jar of LUNAR Nano. LUNAR was a cosmetics company that had sprung up out of nowhere a few years ago, riding the wave of nano- and biotechnological advancement to the luxury-tier of the market. Mia guessed there might be something to their claims, beyond using the right buzzwords in advertising, but she'd never really paid it too much attention. 

"Skin care?" Cox asked, her distaste warring with genuine surprise. "He's giving you an anti-aging face cream?"

She seemed to run the observation through her mind again and chortled, said, "Look, I know I keep saying it, but I think he's really lost it now."

"Maybe it's just to hide the message," Mia offered, turned the package in her hand once, then opened it and took the jar out. She spotted a line of writing on the inside of the package, quickly identified as coordinates. With the cream still in one hand, she tried to scan it into the phone, which barked at Pearce's handwriting, forcing her to input it manually.

"He's given me directions to a pier in Chicago, it's hosting tourist cruises out on the lake."

"Well, maybe it's his way of asking you out on a date," Cox offered. "It's… rather quaint, come to think of it."

Mia looked up and glared at Cox. "I don't think so." She frowned. "Nano… you know, I think I've heard about it. Something…"

She ran a quick search, waded through the first few hits of commercials and shop websites, some vlogger's opinion on the products until she came across what she was looking for.

"Ah, here it is. I knew it," Mia said. "It's one of these urban legends, LUNAR Nano's supposed to confuse fascial recognition software."

She looked over to Cox. "I thought that was bullshit."

Cox smirked. "I'm just enjoying the thought of Pearce regularly using that stuff. Doesn't it smell like wild orchid or something? He must reek like a flowerbed."

Mia considered being annoyed with Cox, but fighting Cox when it came to Pearce was an entirely fruitless effort, Mia had given it up years ago. It didn't mean the topic ever went away entirely, Cox was reminded of it constantly, it just simmered away in the background, until it surged up again.

Mia crossed her arms over her chest, stared across the room at Cox.

"You know, I don't really care what you say," she said. "I'm going to Chicago."

"Didn't he threaten to do unspeakable things to you if you so much as spat in the general direction of Chicago?" Cox inquired. "Maybe he'll even make another sick little movie out of you."

Mia rolled her eyes. "Maybe," she conceded. "But I've clearly been invited. And I'm going. Do you want to come?"

The question took Cox by surprise, Mia wasn't even sure why she'd asked at all. Habit, she supposed, because they'd been working together for years. She sometimes forgot that their origin was rocky at best, but now it slammed into her consciousness and forced her to her feet without realising what she was even doing.

Mia crossed the room to Cox, picked up the side of her chair and rotated her to face her, leaned down over Cox and stared into her eyes.

"Tell me you're just joking," Mia demanded. "Tell me, you aren't going to let it all come down on me. Even if it's just to get to him."

The acidic amusement had bled from Cox under Mia's sudden intensity, but this calm composure was worse in many ways, that frosty edge of control Cox could summon. Mia recalled it from so long ago and it still — secretly — frightened her.

Cox said, "How stupid do you think I am?"

Mia took a breath, wanting to believe the dismissal in Cox's tone, the implied reassurance, but Mia could never decipher Cox completely and Pearce's mere existence in the mix made everything entirely unpredictable.

Cox gave her no time to figure out if she wanted to say something, push for a resolution one way or the other, or if Mia preferred to leave it all unsaid, clinging to her own wishful thinking.

Speaking slowly, each word a carefully pronounced dropped hailstone, "If you dropped Pearce in front of me right, all trussed up and you handed me a butter knife so I can cut off his skin in one-square-inch patches, do you know what I would do?"

Despite herself, the thought, " _Indulge in more gory fantasies?"_ shot through Mia's mind, but her throat had closed down, rendering her unable to say it, even if she'd had the heart to.

"No," Mia said instead. "I don't, that's the problem."

"I'd _leave_ ," Cox answered, very quietly. "I hate Pearce, but making jokes is the worst I'll do. I figure he's just about willing to let that slide."

"You're scared?" Mia asked, blinked in slow realisation. "He's scaring you."

It wasn't something that Cox would ever admit aloud, Mia knew it even before Cox's expression hardened so much it became brittle.

Mia let go of Cox's chair and stepped back, fidgeting a little as she tried to navigate the situation and its unexpected twists and turns.

"Go to Chicago," Cox said to Mia's back and sardonically added, "Try not to get killed."

* * *

The bustle of Chicago had changed in the same way it had in any metropolis of what considered itself the civilised world. Electric cars, many of them self-driving, had changed the background droning flowing through the streets. The L still rattled on it's paths, but new sound insulation had left only a suble vibration that crawled up through the bones of whoever passed by below the tracks. 

Blume had spun a web of infrastructure across the city, mostly invisible to people who didn't care about such things, but their smart devices would pick the signals from the air and use them for navigation and optimisation, steering people through their everyday lives. Stationary cameras were on the way out, camcopters hovered above parks and plazas, adjusting their position to illuminate and monitor all previously blind spots.

Mia leaned against handrail and looked out over the lake while people wandered past behind her, took selfies or queued for the tourist boat that'd take them on a tour. She spotted a few camcopters out above the water, keeping the shoreline under surveillance. Mia recalled the bit in the ctOS FAQ. Emergency response time was less than three minutes, which meant that some underlying system almost certainly monitored all the people on the shore and predicted their next moves. ctOS _knew_ when someone was likely to fall into the water, even before that person did.

Chicago remained on the cutting edge of technological advance. It had the highest adoption rate for any new device that entered the market and as a result, for better or worse, Chicagoans would be the ones the future happened to first.

The Nano face cream did indeed smell of wild orchid — or flowers, anyway, as far as Mia could identify — but it was a bearably subtle scent that faded quickly from awareness. She'd investigated the cream a little more thoroughly after Pearce's gift had all but confirmed the urban myth of it. Something in the cream made Profiler somehow completely fail to recognise a face. It didn't just return an error, accidental or intentional, with the cream, Profiler just didn't seem to realise it was looking at a face. The effect wasn't reliable, though, the tests Mia had ran on herself and Cox, the cream worked only about half the time.

"Welcome home," Pearce said as he stepped to her side and leaned with his back against the handrail, watching the people rather than the lake.

Mia turned her head to steal a long look at him. He was much the same, barely changed from where he was etched into her consciousness with too sharp angles. Same intensity even in his stillness, same sense of solidity when he stood close. He wore a dark, faux-leather jacket against the wind that folded smoothly with his body, some metamaterial with properties she couldn't guess at.

"Doesn't feel like home," Mia confessed. "Not anymore."

She watched the hint of a smile curl the corner of Pearce's lips.

"Thanks for coming anyway."

"What's it all ab-" Mia started, but fell silent when Pearce caught her gaze and put a finger to his lips, still with that slight smirk.

"Let's go," he said then, pushed himself from the handrail and stepped out to the path.

Mia watched him for a moment before she followed. Most of her bounty hunting business with Cox was legal and the few parts that weren't resided firmly in the grey area. Because of Cox's predicament, they went after white collar criminals, the ones unlikely to shoot back. Pearce hadn't been on the good side of the law for decades and Mia wondered what that would do to a person. And he wasn't just doing it somewhere in the world, this was Chicago, the city of Blume and ctOS, where a camera was always watching.

There was nothing there to see, though, he stepped onto the path and the people flowed around him as they would anyone else. Mia thought she caught one or two lingering glances in his direction, but that was all. Perhaps he'd reached some unspoken accord with the people here that allowed him to walk among them. But she couldn't detect any change in him, either, no indication that he was watching his back more, that he felt the constant scrutiny of the cameras at all.

He strode casually along the pavement towards a small marina, just beside where the tourist boat docked. Mia observed the small black pillar at the side of the marina, a scanner that'd raise an alert in case of trespassers, but would be inactive during the day. She liked to imagine she felt the scanner pass over her face, just because it was letting her pass didn't mean some software somewhere wasn't collecting all the data. The face cream didn't feel like as much of a joke now.

She climbed after Pearce into a speedboat, trying not to show how the dip of the boat made her uncomfortable.

She resisted the urge to ask where they were going, if Pearce didn't trust his safety measures, she doubted he'd be saying aloud where he was going, but she didn't have to wait too long.

A few minutes took them out to the abandoned lighthouse off the shore. It hadn't served any other purpose than looking picturesque for the tourists. A lighthouse was just something people expected to see in a place like that, but it served no navigational purpose anymore.

"Let me know when it's safe to talk," Mia said when Pearce braked the boat roughly by the dock and jumped on to it before the boat had slowed down much. Tense with oncoming nausea, Mia threw him the rope and hurried to get off the boat as fast as she could without seeming to do so.

"It's safe to talk," Pearce said. "I bought this place a few years ago, made sure it dropped off the map. It's got its power from a generator and its own water filtration. The lighthouse is technically a ctOS tower, but it's not on the map, either. The inside is shielded from signals and we're out of range for camcopters or most other surveillance. The shore cameras are too far away to get a clear picture."

She followed him up a set of worn metal steps to an open yard of cracked asphalt. Stacks of old crates and boxes were piled in a corner, broken pieces of junk littered the space, but any indication that the place was abandoned was dispersed by the loud music thrumming from the lighthouse.

"I need you for a job," Pearce said. "I can't do it alone."

Mia laughed, "And I'm the only one you could think of?"

Pearce glanced at her from the side, smiled with uncharacteristic warmth and said, "You're the one I trust."

He pushed open the door leading into the building at the foot of the lighthouse itself. The music volume spiked immediaely, but Mia thought she was okay with the selection. The inside of the building looked like a cyberpunk warehouse and any hacker's wet dream. At the back of the room, set up on tall racks was a set of flexible screens, some with surveillance feeds, other with data running over them. The underlying computers were neatly staked on rows of shelves behind them. The ventilation was running quietly and the temperature in the room was comforable.

Mia saw a man leaning over a workbench at the side, working with a soldering rod. He was lost in his work and didn't seem to realise they were there at first.

Behind another shelf, Mia spotted something that might be a kitchen and a table was staked with takeout cartons, pizza boxes and towers of paper coffee cups.

"Frewer," Pearce called and the man by the workbench looked up. "That's Mia, introduce her to Rose."

Frewer was a small man, thin and sickly looking with large wary eyes and a skittering demeanour. He put the soldering iron down and came over, his smile was shy and he never made eye-contact for more than a second, but the way his fingers moved over the display of his phone was faster than even Mia could follow.

"Hello," Frewer said, blinked past Mia and pointed to a chair. "Can you sit down? Uh, are you wearing the face cream?"

"Yeah, it's clever," Mia said. "Despite, you know, not being reliable. But better than nothing, in case Profiler finally patches something in against the scrambler."

"Yes," Frewer agreed. He walked to a shelf and picked up a roll of paper towels, which he offered to Mia awkwardly. "Wipe your face please and turn off your scrambler. The scrambler will stop working soon." He met her gaze for a second. "Yes. Everything will," he said earnestly.

Mia slipped her finger over the button on her phone, watched the brief alert flash in her vision, then ripped off a handful of paper towels to rub her face down with the rough material while Frewer focussed on his phone.

On the other end of the room, Pearce shrugged out of his jacket and put it across the back of a chair, then took off the gun-holster he'd worn underneath. He reached in the pocket of his jacket and a moment later the volume of the music went down.

An arched doorway connected the building to the base of the lighthouse, without any doors, Mia saw more computer equpiment staked there and a spiral staircase leading up. With the music turned down, she heard the metal whine quietly under the weight of someone, just before another man came into view.

He was tall, perhaps taller than Pearce, but he carried himself slightly hunched forward, negating it. He looked grizzled, a mess of grey hair and beard framing a narrow face, currently darkened by anger. His lanky body moved with smooth energy, like his frame was supported by steel-wire.

"'s Aiden back?" he barked. His expression briefly changed as it passed over Mia, but when he spotted Pearce by the chair he pulled himself up a little before he marched up to him.

"Hey, T-Bone, I've brought Mia back we can…"

"You and I," T-Bone snarled and slammed something down on the table next to Pearce. "Have to talk about this."

Pearce glanced down, briefly, kept his gaze fixed on T-Bone.

"You going through my things?" Pearce asked, voice low.

"You left it on the sink," T-Bone snapped, raised a warning finger in front of Pearce's face.

Mia had stopped rubbing her face, craned her neck to see what was going on, but at the distance she could only make out an orange prescription bottle on the table.

Pearce narrowed his eyes, the only indication of annoyance. "What?" he asked, impatience thick in his tone. "You're the one who's run a fever after we got back from Pawnee. We're on a schedule, if you're out, I'm working for two. That," he vaguely indicated the bottle. "Means being up and running for twenty hours straight. What's your point?"

T-Bone made an exasperated noise, seemed like he was about to shout, but stopped himself at the last moment.

"You know what that stuff does?"

He looked over his shoulder at Frewer. "You know, right? Tell him what it does!"

Frewer hesitated, clearly unsure if it was rhetorical or not. Quietly, Frewer said, "Reolon's a recent ADHD medication. It was praised for its effectiveness, but. But it's proving very addictive. And side-effects. You know? Side-effects are insomnia, headaches, loss of appetite, irritability, increased libido, depression. There are cases of suicides…"

T-Bone had snapped his attention back to Pearce while Frewer counted it down, impatience burning away at him.

"It messes with your _head_ ," T-Bone concluded sharply. "You've got to be _solid_ if we do this."

Pearce tilted his head back, pushed his chin forward in challenge. "You want me out?" he asked. "Because I'm not eating healthy?"

Mia had the impression it was an old argument, or at least not the first time it's come up. Was he really offering to drop out, though? Pearce walking away from adversity? She almost heard Cox's voice in her head. _That'd be the day._

"No! Jesus blistering fist…" T-Bone snapped and let the curse fade in exasperation. "I want your head in the game! Not up some pill bottle! I've seen it, you know." T-Bone shook his head in mock sadness. "Thought there was something off about you." He paused, added, "I put it down to stress, but… not when the truth's right in my face."

Pearce shifted forward, half an inch, but they'd already seemed to be barely as far away from coming to blows, so the tiny movement was nothing short of a declaration of war.

"I don't make mistakes," Pearce said testily.

"Like shooting at the drones in Pawnee?"

"Oh yeah, and you thought it was such a bad idea you just let me do it."

Pearce shook his head and Mia caught the sharp edge of amusement in his expression as he broke eye-contact with T-Bone and stepped around him. The gesture was intentionally dismissive of T-Bone and his argument.

T-Bone's eyebrows drew together harder, seething fury in his gaze as he made a few quick, long steps to catch up with Pearce, slapped a hand on his upper arm to yank him back around.

Pearce reacted instantly, twisted his arm out of the grip, pulled himself around and faced T-Bone.

Still watching inappropriately mesmerised by the display, Mia realised that they were _beyond_ the point where they should have come to blows, except it hadn't happened.

"And her?" T-Bone demanded, pointing an arm at Mia. "Canon fodder? You remember what happened last time?"

"I'm _not…_ " Mia began, but realised she was being completely ignored. Besides, she wasn't even sure it was untrue. Pearce hadn't explained anything of what he expected her to do and what help he thought she could render, but it was doubtlessly going to be dangerous. Perhaps Pearce had just recruited her to burn her off. Was she willing to bet her life on that he wasn't?

"Last time?" Pearce snorted. "Last time was _twenty-three_ years ago."

He stepped even closer, pulled himself up just slightly in an obvious attempt to stare the other man down. His expression turned vicious and he added, "And Clara was a double-dealing amateur who got what she deserved. _You_ can't go into Blume with me, she can."

He settled his fingers on T-Bone's sternum and shoved hard, forced T-Bone a step back.

"So get out of my face."

After the one step, T-Bone had easily rebalanced himself and made no attempt to move further, unless Pearce really did strike him. But in the face of Pearce's hostility, T-Bone seemed to calm himself, though no less steely in his poise.

"How's the knee?" he asked in a tone that almost sounded normal, a friend asking a friend, but something vicious lurked underneath.

Pearce startled, very faintly, betraying surprise in the tiny second before he remembered his composure.

"Of course I noticed," T-Bone said. "It comes and goes, but it's never not there. Is it?"

Something very close to disgust curled Pearce's lip and he inclined his head, half a nod and less than that of a concession.

He stepped past T-Bone, then turned around and marched for the door, no doubt aware that everyone's focus would be on his gait, though there was nothing noticably wrong.

"Aiden," T-Bone called, sounded just a little conciliatory now.

Pearce stopped, but let T-Bone's attention fall on his impassive back. T-Bone crossed his arms over his chest, "I don't want to fight you, but there's a very narrow magin of error here. If you can't keep it together…"

Unlike T-Bone, Mia could still see Pearce's face, enough to make out the contradictory mix of anger and underlying exhaustion. He noticed her scrutiny and a small sardonic smile cut up his expression. He shook his head again, perhaps as an answer to T-Bone, and started walking again.

As he passed her, he said, "Welcome to the old men's club."

He left the building, leaving behind a leaden silence still filled with the music blathering on ineffectively against the tension.

T-Bone slapped at the pill bottle and send it flying into a corner, then he stalked away into another room, clattering with something.

Uncertainly, Mia sought out Frewer's gaze, who had stopped his fidgeting and seemed deep in thought.

She said, "What did I get myself into?"

"Bad things," Frewer said sagely, fell silent again as he thought about it. "Blume has a new OS ready to go and they have lobbied for extensive legislative power. Yup. Well. We… we all, we can't go on if we don't get in again. The new, uh, the new OS is very advanced. We need a copy of its source code and the only place to get it is Blume HQ."

"You're planning to break into Blume HQ? Tech Meadows?" She whistled. "Well fuck me."

Frewer said nothing, tabbed something on his phone and then suddenly fixed her so sharply she felt pinned until she realised he was using the lenses to scan in her face.

"It's… " Frewer started when he was done and looked back down at his phone. "Well, Ray isn't _wrong._ Aiden is… I know the meds, it's… not good. _"_

Mia frowned. "Oh come on, Pearce isn't some junkie," she stated, but wasn't momentarily sure if she didn't just want to convince herself.

Frewer looked up, searched her face and was briefly still. "Maybe not, but he isn't what he used to be. No one is."

He shuffled away and went past the workbench and to the computer array at the back of the room. Mia slipped off her chair and stood uncertainly, wondering if she should go after Pearce, but not sure what she'd say if she did.

Something quietly hummed, pulled her attention away and she watched as a small black sphere lifted from where it had been resting on the workbench. The sound faded after takeoff and the drone hovered almost noiselessly. It slid through the air and stopped in front of Mia's face.

 _[Hello Mia, I'm Rose.]_ was displayed in Mia's left lens.

"Wow," she remarked, stunned. "What are you?" She looked past the drone at Frewer who flashed her a wide grin before he seemed to run out of convidence for it.

_[I was a tracking drone for Blume, but Tobias and Ray wrote a new programme for me.]_

"We're working on a voice output," T-Bone said, walking back inside. He seemed to have calmed down completely as he walked over to her. "But it's not ready yet."

"I'm sorry what I said about you," he said and held out his hand. "I'm Ray."

"Mia." She shook his hand. "And don't worry, I know that wasn't about me."

T-Bone's weathered face released only some of its tension.

"I heard something about a raid on Blume HQ?" she said.

He barked a laugh, reached out and slapped her shoulder with surprising strength.

"Yes, the lion's den. Seven stories down below Tech Meadows, where they're hiding their mainframe."

"Won't they have copies on other workstations?"

"Yes," T-Bone agreed, "with people working on them and they're a tight team. We can't hide among them. It's better we go for the server. We have an insider within Blume. He can't get a copy out, but he's our way in. We have a layout and a schedule to work with. Blume also still needs to coordinate with the city council, so there are leaks, too."

"But Tech Meadows…" Mia said. She'd spent hours online looking into the place, for no other reason than her own curiosity. She believed in that old adage that nothing was impenetrable, but Tech Meadows came damn close to it.

"I don't know about Aiden," T-Bone said with small growl and quick glance to where Pearce had vanished. "But I have a few aces up my sleeve. And I'm itching to play them, if you know what I mean. We can't hack the place, but there are still ways to ruin somebody's day."

* * *

The weather forecast had warned of a thunderstorm that night so Pearce pulled the canvas cover over their boats. Something to do with his hands that didn't involve balling them into fists, but he felt the tension running through his body, unwilling to be so easily disspellt. 

Straightening away from the boats, his gaze passed over the lighthouse, tracked all the way up to the tip and his expression darkened, a frown so hard it threatened to settle as a headache right behind his eyes. He took his gaze away, ignored Chicago across the water and turned instead to follow the rocky shoreline of the island until he saw nothing but water in all directions.

He climbed to where a rock formed a natural bench and settled down, just above where gentle waves slipped over a narrow stretch of gravel beach.

He leaned his head back against the rock, lowered the lenses' transparency against the bright sky and logged on to an online poker game. It took a moment for the data to transfer through his proxies and firewalls, a second he found almost unbearbly long, but then the other players shimmered into existence around him, weirdly hovering above the water or placed through the rock before the simulation fixed itself and stopped trembling as it compensated for his eye movements. It was what people called an 'honest' setup. Players wore avatars to protect their identity, but they mimicked the players' behaviour and even some of their facial expressions, allowing for a poker game under almost realistic conditions.

Barely a round in, Pearce found his mood slipping further at the beginning of a losing streak. His hands were bad, but what was worse, his opponents hands were too good for them to throw the games, slowly syphoning away at Pearce's budget. Not that money was an issue exactly, it was the principle of the thing.

The low churn of footsteps beat itself into his attention and he turned his head, the simulation adjusted, stayed in place like it would if it was a solid table and real people, not pixels painted on the insides of his lenses.

Pearce watched T-Bone make his way toward him and considered ignoring him, focussing on the game and perhaps have a chance to turn it around, but it was an idle thought. He could push against T-Bone, but if he drove him away, he'd have pushed to hard.

Clenching his teeth, Pearce switched out of the game.

Wordlessly, T-Bone held out a bottlecan. Pearce deliberately looked it over, raised his brows.

"Are you trying to apologise with discount beer or do we have to talk about my drinking, too?" he asked, with a sneer placed on _drinking._

T-Bone kept holding the beer out to him, but when Pearce made no move to take it, he put it down on the ground by Pearce side.

"Team," T-Bone started, visibly forcing himself to keep his voice level. "You know how that works?"

"We're a team?" Pearce asked.

T-Bone shook his head, sighed a little and looked out over the lake. "I don't wanna play mind games with you," he said finally. "I just want to know where you stand, because if you don't know… or… if it's because you only get through the day with a pill bottle…" he waved his hand in the air to stop the argument before it started. "Let's just drop the whole shit show and move on, like you wanted to."

When Pearce said nothing, T-Bone shook his head and added, "Maybe I just got it wrong. You wanted out, maybe I misunderstood why. Maybe you've got to. Just… _talk to me_ about it."

Pearce didn't answer for a long time, narrowed eyes focussed unrelenting on the other man.

"Do you know what I think?" Pearce asked. "I think your projecting. It's you who hasn't been reliable. You got sick after Pawnee, not me. You can't go into Blume HQ with me. You're the weak link, I've been holding up my end."

T-Bone frowned, took a breath to say something, but Pearce didn't let him.

"Come to think of it, the only one disrupting the 'team' is you, because you don't trust me, I didn't fuck up, you have no reason to doubt me."

T-Bone jostled a little in his place, caught between leaving too much unsaid and making the confrontation worse. "You haven't even noticed," he said finally. "How long have you been taking that stuff?"

Pearce shrugged, then shook his head, keeping his gaze pinned on the other man. "Come back when you got anything against me."

He deliberately repositioned his phone on his knees, flipped back to the poker app so that T-Bone had to see it.

"I'll do my share, and I'll do yours, too. Just don't judge from the sidelines," Pearce added with some finalty. He flicked his gaze down and added, "But thanks for the beer."

Dismissed, on this or on beyond the dividing line to insulting, T-Bone didn't leave immediately, but his face had unexpectedly settled, though his frown hadn't softened by much. He waited a moment while Pearce gave every impression of diving back into his game.

T-Bone said, "For the record, I notice when you try to play me."

Pearce passed a bored glance over him and said nothing, but T-Bone seemed to grow tired of the argument from one moment to the next, he turned away and marched back to the lighthouse.

* * *

For days, tension soured the atmosphere in the lighthouse, because while it was large for just four people, with plenty of corners to retreat to, but it was also an island and trips to shore were budgeted to account for the inherent risk. Both Pearce and T-Bone were pushing the plan forward hard, knowing they were on borrowed time. The two men didn't _talk_. They exchanged _words_ , living like this demanded they were civil to each other. And all other encounters functioned on a level of brutal professionalism that cut through the stale summer heat like a blizzard. Nothing was solved between them, but they managed to work with staggering efficiency. 

Frewer kept to himself, he was the only one who didn't leave the island at all, just tinkered on one thing or another. He'd talk if Mia approached him, but she always had the impression he'd much rather she were elsewhere, so she let him be.

She attempted to hold a conversation with Rose, but the drone's AI was rudimentary. The drone served as the guard dog of the island, but it was not useful in the larger scheme of things. The magnetic field T-Bone had unleashed on the drones over his old junkyard in Pawnee had wiped the drone's drives clean. It was running an entirely new OS, written by T-Bone and Frewer, more a comforting pastime than the forging of a weapon. Some information could still be gleaned from it, of course, some conclusions drown from it's hardware. They knew the drones were networked and shared cpu capabilities, so they probably became smarter the more of them were close together. The drones were armed with a taser and had enough power for five charges, before the drone would have to risk its functioning, but whether it was programmed for self-sacrifice or capable to reason on that level remained a mystery.

"Who's your insider?" Mia had asked, grouped around a large table with old-school blueprints spread out and a layer of 3D reconstruction on top of it.

"Derek Wyland," T-Bone had answered and smirked a little when he added. "Got my old job, actually. Blume hires the strangest people for that position."

"Indeed," Frewer had agreed quietly and earned a sharp look from T-Bone, who then cleared his throat and continued.

"Anyway, Derek-boy's other occupation was… something else. He used to be in DedSec, back when there still was a DedSec."

"He was on the Council of Daves," Pearce had added. "We," he said and looked at T-Bone, "don't know if Blume suspects him, but chances are if they do, Wyland would've been taken down already."

"But they could be watching him," Frewer had said. "They do that."

After that, the conversation had soured again with Pearce frostily declaring his setup with Wyland was secure as if the mere suggestion it might not be was a personal affront. Mia didn't doubt Pearce and the others had used every conceivable precaution, but she tentatively agreed with Frewer: Blume was watching and they could have so many reason for leaving Wyland alone. In fact, she thought Wyland would make a fantastic bait in the grander scheme of things. He had access to Blume, enough to get them in, enough to give them an edge. If Blume wanted to catch Ray Kenney and Aiden Pearce, they had to give them at least the illusion of a fighting chance. Otherwise both men would simply go to ground and disappear.

Mia doubted the thought hadn't occured to the others, so she kept her own council. She knew it would be dangerous, she'd known from the start, after all.

The lighthouse was never silent, it groaned and chittered quietly to itself, the water constantly beat against the rock of the tiny, artificial island it was built on. Metal chafed thinly in slowly rusting hinges as Mia climbed the steps to the upper level of the lighthouse. Up here, the building seemed to sway ever so slightly as the early gusts of a thunderstorm came in over the lake.

The air was cool and fresh, though and she automatically took a deep breathe when she stepped out on the catwalk and went to the railing, put her arms over it and leaned forward.

On the left of her was the city of Chicago, glittering in a million different lights, a gaudy counterpoint against the simplistic stars above it. Even as she watched, the clouds began to obscure the view.

She turned her face into the wind, away from the city and over the thicker blackness of the lake, only here and there broken by the marker lights of a ship, jostled on the turbulent water.

"Couldn't sleep?" Pearce asked and the tiny spark of shock his unexpected presence caused was almost pleasant, a tiny burst of adrenaline tingling in her throat.

She turned around and peered into the darkness along the side of the catwalk. Pearce was reclining on a lounger of some kind, diagonally slotted across the catwalk, blocking the way. The distant lights traced the outline of his body, caught in tiny spots of blinking gold in the whiskey tumbler he held resting on his stomach. She saw that he was dressed for bed, a pair of track pants and a worn out muscle shirt that left his upper body exposed to the cool air.

"Same?" she asked back.

He snorted quietly in faint amusement, instead of an answer, he said, "Are you scared?"

"Scared?" she repeated and laughed at little at the notion. "No. Anxious. Worried. On edge. Yes. But not scared. I make mistakes when I'm scared, so I don't do that anymore."

"That's semantics," he observed.

She shrugged, "Hey, if you don't want me along, I don't have to be."

"That's not what I said." His voice had grown steadily quieter, dropping to an almost hypnotic whisper, vibrating slightly with the wind. He took a sip from the glass, shifted his shoulders and tucked his other arm behind his neck.

"No, I guess you didn't," Mia agreed. She hesitated for a second, watched the first sparks of lightning streak down above the water. "Do you have some more of that whiskey?"

He moved again, untucked his hand and reached into the shadows in the floor by the lounger, picked up the bottle. He straightened up a little to refill his glass before he held the bottle out to her. She took it from him and Pearce relaxed back again.

The bottle was a quarter full, caught a dull glow when she held it out to the light, took a sniff, then saluted with the bottle in Pearce's direction.

"Cheers," she said and took a careful sip. Pearce grunted an affirmative and drank, too.

They were silent for a time, Mia chased the feeling of the alcohol's heat through her body, was surprised that it seemed to loosen up some knot deep in her belly she hadn't known was there.

"You know I had a crush on you?" Mia asked. "When I was working for you?"

She tilted her head to watch him in the darkness, but she wasn't entirely sure he was smiling or not, or what it meant if he did. She peeled a finger away from the bottle to point it at him and said, "And I think you just pretended not to notice until it went away on its own."

"Seemed the least awkward solution," he said.

"But you were protecting me, too," she continued. "I didn't realise it at the time, but you never wanted me in the line of fire. Whenever something happened you weren't sure you could control, you made me stay home."

"I needed you behind monitors," he pointed out. "You think I would've wasted your talent just to keep you safe?"

She thought about it, shrugged slightly again and took another sip from the bottle, letting her thoughts run through the variables.

Finally, she said, "I think you never had just one reason for anything."

Unexpected, Pearce chuckled and said, "I multitask."

Mia turned away and put her forearms on the railing, took a deep breath and already smelled how charged the air had become.

"Who was she?" she asked. "Clara, I mean. You never mentioned her."

If Pearce had refused to answer, she wouldn't be surprised, but she added, "She's dead?"

"She was a DedSec hacker," Pearce said, voice a quiet rasp, undulating slightly with each gust of wind. "I hired her, she was good at tracking down information. Helped me find my niece's killer, got caught up in the fray. The Club had her assassinated."

A lightning streaked across the sky, lit the bulging mass of clouds, enormous and low above them.

"Why does Ray blame you?"

This time, Pearce didn't answer for a long time.

"That's ancient history," he said finally, an edge of warning in his tone and despite her curiosity, Mia didn't dare test it and push him further. Tensions were bad enough as it was. She took a sip of the whiskey instead.

After a moment Pearce said, "I wonder how much acid Cox has been spewing these past few years."

She thought she saw the ghost of that other hacker, just briefly, hovering around them, wondering if Pearce was thinking about her, but she was willing to let him change the topic, too.

She laughed at the thought of Cox, but only for a moment and without mockery, "Oh, a lot. Can you blame her? You crippled her and that little trip in the trunk? She still gets twitchy in small enclosed spaces."

She turned back around and raised her hand, made Pearce swallow back whatever interjection he was about to make. Mia continued, "But that's between the two of you. She knew what she was getting into. Made you her enemy."

"But it wasn't just Cox," he pointed out.

Mia thought it was unfair that she had to have this conversation now, entirely without preparation instead of enjoying a good night's sleep before a hard day's work.

"No," she agreed. She glanced at him, but what she could see of his face revealed nothing but a calm intensity, much like he always looked when he was focussed on something.

"I was young," Mia said and snorted a laugh. "Such a stupid line. I made a mistake. No… like, I made one mistake and then, because I was trying to fix it, I made more mistakes." She sighed, thought about it, aimed a raised finger and the bottle at him accusingly, then said, "And that was one hell of a bitch move."

Pearce snorted a laugh, but it lasted only a moment and vanished when his phone gave a sharp alarm sound.

Pearce was on his feet instantly.

"Lenses," he commanded.

Mia, feeling dumbstruck, obeyed without a second thought. She fished her digital lenses from her pocket and blew on them slighty, though their self-cleaning surface made them resistant to much worse treatment. Awkwardly, she manevouered with the whiskey bottle and fingered one of the lenses in her eye, blinked to activate it.

[ETA 00:15:42] Rose's interface announced, counting down ominously.

"What…?" she started as Pearce stood up.

"We're being invaded," he explained and walked to the door, dipping into the gloom. A moment later, a low thud revealed that he hadn't bothered with the steep stairs to get down a level.

Shaking off her shock, Mia finally ditched the whiskey and hurried to follow him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reference:** LUNAR Nano lifted wholesale from Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, where it's actually _Lancôme_ Nano, but real-life brands are always immersion breaking for me. Also, if there's anything in here that's also in any of MacLeod's books, that's where I stole it from.
> 
>  **Also,** Reolon is a fictional ADHD medication with side-effects and addictiveness cranked up to eleven for dramatic effect.


	5. Widow's Walk – Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **NOTE: I messed up the timestamps in the last chapter. They do not, in fact, have fifteen _hours_ at their disposal…**
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Warning:** Minor attempt at humour in one scene.  
>  **Too much inventory:**    
> BAR-9oo: fictional newer model of the biometric rifle Aiden uses in the game, stylised because I like it better. Also, I didn't realise that smart guns actually are a thing.   
> Killdrive: These things apparently exist in real life, too, called USB killer, it instantly fries any computer it's plugged into.   
> Aiden's phone is the same he uses in _Empty Darkness_ , styled after the "Philips fluid flexible smartphone design concept".  
>  **Irrelevant Recap:** In _Empty Darkness_ , it's mentioned that Hollywood's making a film about Aiden and that the film's production was a dogged by scandals and leaks (as if, you know, a hacker wasn't too happy with the project.) 

 

Aiden landed smoothly at the bottom of the stairs. In a series of smooth movements he went to the folding bed he'd barely used and slipped on his clothes and boots, slipped on his gun holster and snapped the phone closed around his wrist.

Contrary to what T-Bone believed, Aiden knew he was getting old. He'd observed the signs for years, realised the odd twinge in his joints, the way he had to invest ever more hours into training and sparring, how the distances on his obstacle courses seemed to stretch more and more. He'd realised he was growing old when the injuries he sustained took a day or so longer to heal. He'd understood it, once and for all, when Marcus Brenks had nearly got the better of him on the train. But then, Marcus was just another ghost haunting him, one of too many, making it hard to understand what they were staying and harder to care either way.

Back then, he'd understood he had exactly two options: he could slow down, or he could push harder. So he'd pushed and he felt time and the world push back, a little bit harder every day, but he wasn't giving ground just yet.

Mia landed on the floor behind him, made eye contact, then rushed to her own pile of clothes to quickly dress and arm herself. Aiden considered giving her a quick speech on their emergency plan, but he simply assumed T-Bone or Frewer to have done that already. There'd been enough opportunities for it and Mia didn't seem all that confused.

[ETA 00:15:19]

Aiden dropped down the stairs to the ground floor. He spotted T-Bone struggling stiffly into a shirt while he hurried to this workstation. A moment later, Frewer appeared from another corner, looking as bedraggled when shocked from sleep as he did when he was wide awake.

They'd planned for this very situation. They were ready to ditch this place and a quarter hour of advance warning was more than what they'd need. Backup their most vital data and wipe the drives, then make a run for it.

Aiden ignored the two other men, and stepped to his computer, it linked with his Lens automatically, providing a HUD with additional information as he accessed the logs to see what had triggered the alarm.

Camera drones couldn't fly out over Lake Michigan, maybe the advanced models could, the ones employed out at Blume HQ, but right now, Blume monitored traffic out on the water via satellite. Aiden didn't know if there were plans to replace them, they were costly to maintain after all.

Aiden logged in and accessed the network through an old admin account he'd set up for just this moment. The remote access was slower, working through the proxies half a world away before it was rerouted back to him. It chafed his nerves.

[ETA 00:12:08]

For a moment, he considered turning the proxies off. A ctOS centre accessing a ctOS network using a legitimate account shouldn't raise any alarms anywhere. But then, Blume already knew where they were hiding, they might be tracking traffic to this place and Aiden didn't want to give away the extent of his knowledge.

Finally, the connection was established and the interface appeared on the screen. He selected the coordinates near the lighthouse to review the recordings made the last few minutes.

Radar tech and image enhancement allowed for high-quality video, despite the thick cloud cover above the lake, giving him a clear view of a ship, dark shape outlined only by the technology, because its position lights were off.

Aiden watched as men climbed into motorboats along the side of the larger vessel. The satellite footage provided only hints about their equipment, but the speed and efficiency of their movements implied at least paramilitary training and high-end material. Blume's Corporate Police had combat gear on that scale, though they were trying not to show it off so much on US soil. The official line was these people were necessary to ensure the safety of Blume personnel and infrastructure in third world countries. At home, Blume promised to bring them in only in the event of a terror attack.

Well, Aiden guessed it wasn't much of a lie. The media had started referring to him as a terrorist some years ago, when the mood had began to turn from him, the romanticism of the vigilante coming off like cracked paint. He still had fans, of course, but in a propaganda war against Blume and the government, he'd always known he'd lose. These days, he relied more on intimidation and apathy, though some recent Hollywood project about the Fox had reignited some of the public's adoration.

Aiden had had the occasional look at BCP files and recruitment, and while some of it was innocuous, mostly BCP was Blume's elite, private army. A tightly-knit and well-paid troop, used to getting their way and the job done, regardless of the odds. If Blume were willing to throw them into action in Chicago on this scale meant they expected it to pay off.

"We've got four times six BCP Elites," Aiden announced, counting down men per motorboat. Aiden switched to live footage, but couldn't find the unlit boats on the water.

"Check the shore," T-Bone said. "We're about to lose ctOS access."

He hit a key and the HUD on the Lens expanded.

[ETA 00:07:59]

[CTOS 00:03:00]

[PWR 00:05:00]

Aiden blinked irritably at how much space it occupied, but didn't waste time on a complaint, only shot T-Bone a quick look when the other man stood up from his workstation and hurried to swipe the backup drives into a bag, dropped a killdrive into the workstation and then he hurried to the weapon's locker.

Aiden accessed the network, only scrolled back a few minutes, cycled through the cameras on the marina and the Lakefront Trail. It was empty, which it shouldn't be even in the middle of the night. Late night revellers should be about, some drunks or homeless, maybe even a drug pusher too high on his own product to remember he was being watched, but the paths were all swiped clean.

Except, of course, for the dark vans that had moved into position and, in the live feed, stood motionless along the shore. Aiden supposed that, if he had time to check, he'd find Blume or the cops had closed off the Trail in the area. He counted at least six vans, could be eight in them if they wanted to comfortable with all their gear, could be a lot more if they didn't care…

Without warning, electricity snapped and crackled, a fuse blew on Aiden's machine and snapped at his fingers making him snatch them away with a snarled curse. A moment later, the lights went out. Those servers with a generator connection remained running, but the majority of their rig stuttered to an abrupt halt, leaving only the uncomfortable absence of the previously ever present humming.

"Your calculation was off," Aiden observed.

"It was a rough guess," T-Bone grunted. "Not a sacred vow."

He slung a rifle over his shoulder and packed two bags, stepped in close right in front of Aiden, pulled to his full height. Even in the semi-darkness, his teeth glinted as he peeled his lips and beard away into what might have been a grin of some kind, or just a sneer dressed up as one.

"But we got everything," he said smugly. It was probably too dark for him to see Aiden raise his brows in answer.

T-Bone glanced over his shoulder to where Frewer still stood bent in front of a monitor, his hand already on the last drive, ready to pick it up and pocket it the moment the data transfer was finished.

"We're almost ready," Frewer said, looking back at T-Bone, a deer in the headlight of the monitor's glow.

Aiden stepped past T-Bone as if he had never been too close and strode to the weapon's locker. Handgun and baton into their respective holsters, he squared his shoulders until the straps settled perfectly, then reached for the BAR-9oo, a small confirmation briefly flared up in the Lens as the weapon recognised him as its owner.

"Mia," he called as he turned around, he spotting the jutting barrel of a rifle over her shoulder. "You're with me."

He picked up the last bag from the table as he marched for the door, glance passing over Mia to assess her state of readiness. She was dressed and armed, face set in grim determination, so much for keeping her out of the line of fire. It might have been true back then, but he couldn't afford to this time. He only hoped she really knew how to handle herself.

Rose hovered down from where she'd been up in the lighthouse, circled around them on head-height.

"I'm taking Rose," Frewer announced, settled his hand on his phone to feed the drone new parameters.

Stopping in the doorway, Aiden glanced back and made eye contact with T-Bone and this time, despite the tension between them, the moment fell into place.

T-Bone said, "Bonfire is live."

Aiden flashed him a grin, only now the rush of adrenaline was making itself felt, something too uncomfortably close to excitement. Idly, he wondered if there was something to what T-Bone had said, that this was the drug doing its thing on his mind, but as far as he was concerned, T-Bone had confused cause and effect and as a result, was wrong on both counts.

[ETA 00:04:13]

* * *

By the time they filed outside, the storm had reached them, hard wind tearing at them, lightning crackling and lighting the bulging clouds above. Some errant drops of water punched into their faces, either from the beginning rain or from the lake being whipped by gushes of wind. 

Pearce ripped the covers from one of the boats, didn't care that the wind blew it away until it caught on the fence around the lighthouse. He tossed the bag at T-Bone, who managed to catch it, but put it down so he could pull the cover from another boat. He quickly loaded the bags into the boat, then climbed in with Frewer hurrying after him.

Frewer settled down awkwardly, focussed on his phone and Rose hovered after him, settled in the seat by his side. T-Bone climbed into the front seat, behind the wheel and started the engine, but its roaring was nearly lost in the storm.

Mia stopped on the dock, finally realising what had irked her since the moment she'd come outside.

"The shore is dark," she called. "They blacked out the entire shoreline."

"Yeah," Pearce grunted without much inflection. "Get in."

Mia did as she was told, didn't like it as Pearce shifted out of her way, making it clear that he expected her to drive.

"My Lenses don't have any night vision," she said. "And I've never driven a speedboat."

"I know, it's pretty much like a car."

She missed the move he made on his phone, but the HUD in her Lens changed, outlined the immediate surrounding of the boat and as she looked up, it marked the shoreline for her. The speedboat must have sensors of it's own, Pearce had linked her up with it.

"Try to hit waves at an angle," Pearce added. Beside them, T-Bone's and Frewer's boat drifted off from the pier for a little, before T-Bone accelerated the boat, took it in a tight circle and vanished into the darkness, heading away from the island.

"Don't make your turns too sharp, head in that direction," Pearce added. His outstretched arm aimed for the shore further down, not heading straight for it, but it wouldn't take them out of range of the area BCP had locked off.

The small hairs on her neck stood off as she took the boat away from the dock, wondering if the enemy speedboats were already converging on the lighthouse island. The thunderstorm would hide the noise of their engines in the same way she heard her own speedboat only faintly, sensed the power of it's motors as it pushed itself through the boiling water.

In the first few moments, Mia wasn't entirely sure if she agreed with Pearce and whether steering the speedboat really was like driving a car or if it was just similar enough to make the differences irritating. The water's resistance was different than the comparatively minor friction of asphalt, with and without the thunderstorm whipping around them.

She focussed on the HUD display to orient herself, tried not to think of what was going on behind her — or what it was she was heading into. Pearce had designated her as the driver, so watching her back was his responsibility. She couldn't come up with someone more competent, but the annoying, hunted prickling at the back of her head was a far more primal response.

Pearce didn't sit down, only settled a knee on the seat and kept his body upright, one hand shielding his eyes from the spray and the wind, keeping an eye on the shore and on the rapidly retreating lighthouse as well as the data scrolling over his Lenses. His his rifle pointed downward, almost too casually, but he was ready to snap it up instantly.

It would be several minutes until they hit the shore, Mia guessed, judging from the time it took when going at a normal, leisurely pace and good weather.

"What's the plan?" Mia asked and added, "I need to know."

Pearce's communication had been all over the place for days and T-Bone's and Frewer's was in a similar state. It wasn't so much a need for secrecy as it was an erratic sense for what needed and didn't need to be explained. These men had been working together for a long time, incorporating Mia as the newcomer wasn't coming quite naturally. She'd known there was an emergency plan, but no one had ever bothered to give her the details.

"The most likely way to attack the lighthouse," Pearce said. "Comes from the water. Keeping the shore covered means we have nowhere to run in case we escape. T-Bone and Frewer are heading out to the lake and swing back around further out. With luck, well outside BCP's perimeter. Right now," he said, a finger briefly sliding over the screen of his phone to access that particular data. "They're surrounding the island. It's dark, they made sure of it, so they got night vision, probably Lenses, but it doesn't matter. Bonfire…"

He trailed off, something else catching his attention and his shoulders hunched forward as he got a little lower, gaze fixed ahead of them.

"Some sort of trap," Mia said. "Of course Bonfire is a trap, what else would it be?"

"Yeah," he agreed, but didn't elaborate. "We're almost in range, don't slow down, that area has breakwater, you hit it fast enough, we're on dry land."

"It's gonna be a rocky landing," she remarked more to herself. "What about Ray and Tobias?" she asked. "Are we their distraction or are they our backup?"

Pearce snorted a short laugh. "There's no help coming," he had turned his face into the headwind, had to raise his voice to make himself heard. "There's a parking garage just across the street, you can take any of the cars, theoretically, but remote unlocks are hit and miss these days, so there's a 770S parked on ground floor."

Something in his voice alerted her and she spared him a quick, sidelong glance. She'd asked for exactly these sorts of details, it was what she'd need if she was separated from him and needed to find her own way out, it didn't have to mean anything other than that. But it would be information she'd need if he didn't make it, too.

"Here it comes," he said and the wind stole his words before he could add any sort of inflection, any indication of what he was thinking. Mia was nearly blind, it was too dark to see her immediate surrounding and the glow of downtown Chicago, the parts that weren't blacked out and the HUD on her Lenses as well as the bright flashes of lightning behind them prevented her eyes to adjust properly. But she did see the muzzle flashes, lined up like Christmas lights along where she knew the shore was. She heard the rattle only distantly, ducked instinctively and veered the boat slightly to the side, slowed them down and the salve punched into the water right in front of them.

"Keep going!" Pearce ordered sharply and she braced herself against the resistance of the water and the boat as she turned it sharper towards the shore, the acceleration slightly delayed in the waves recoiling from the shore.

He straightened, seemingly without any trouble on the unsteady ground and levelled his gun. The low, dark bark of his BAR made itself heard far better than the enemies' guns, short bursts, giving him a heartbeat to aim in the dark rather than just fire blind, even if Mia assumed there were more than enough enemies ahead of them. Another salve went over them, most hit the water, but something punched through the back of the boat and it shuddered under the impact.

Mia forced herself to focus on keeping the boat steady, getting there and trying not think of what would happen when she did. A lightning struck somewhere close by, deafening in ways the gunfire failed to be and for a long long second, the shoreline was illuminated and burned itself into her memory. The sharp-edged grey rocks of the breakwater they were heading toward almost head-on, a stretch of grass behind it, then the Lakefront trail. She saw the black bulks of the BCP vans, parked all along the path strategically to serve as cover for the elite private army Blume had fashioned their security guards into.

She also saw Pearce pick out his targets in the brightness, downing a soldier near a van and another just beside him, who was ducking into the shadow of a kiosk. When the light faded, the blackness was even worse and Mia almost flinched when Pearce briefly ducked back down, gun resting on the windshield, but he focussed on his phone, rapidly tapping something that Mia thought looked far too complicated for a last-minute saving throw.

She heard Pearce hiss, a frustrated sound, something far more frightening than gunshot salves raining down around them, but she didn't have time to ask and whatever he did, either it had worked or he'd given up, because he pulled himself back upright without offering an explanation.

The boat's sensors fired an alarm as she neared the breakwater. Vaguely, she thought how fucked they'd be if the boat happened to have an emergency brake assist, but there was no time even to worry about it.

"Bonfire's ready," Pearce shouted and levered himself over the windshield and crouched on the bow. She had time to recognise his words as some kind of warning, just enough she'd check her response.

A moment later, the sky behind her lit on fire with an explosion, followed by a low rumbling noise, indistinguishable from thunder at first, but it kept building, like pressure, deafening and ongoing roaring, leaving a ringing in her ears despite the distance. Several smaller explosions followed, each adding another light of bright white and orange and red, bathing the quietly ominous shoreline into a hellish glow.

They hit the breakwater, screaming metal as the boat's hull scraped over the rocks. It slithered for a moment until the hull tore open and the boat jolted to the side and dropped, nearly shaking Mia off.

Pearce had used the forward momentum to leap from the boat, he'd cleared the breakwater and landed on the grass and rolled to his feet, with the same motion, he tossed a grenade to his right. It exploded on impact, protecting his flank and giving him the precious second he needed to reach the enemy.

For the moment shielded by the bulk of the boat from the soldiers and their guns, Mia chanced a look back out over the lake and the conflagration the lighthouse island had become. The lighthouse tower itself was gone, detonated and collapsed on itself, the parts scattered into the churning waters. The island was just rock and the buildings had been mostly metal, fenced in by chain-link. The entire place must have been rigged and drenched in fire accelerant to make it burn like that, bright flames licking so high, they seemed to meet and join the bulging thunderclouds.

The BAR barked, not too far away and Mia snapped her attention back around, her own gun ready. The impact of the boat on the shore was still beating in her muscles, made her a little shaky on the suddenly steady ground under her feet. She realised she'd not heard any other shots but the BAR since their rocky landing and as she tracked the mayhem along the path, the pieces assembled themselves in her mind.

Night vision, that had been the key from the start and why it hadn't bothered Pearce that she lacked it. Their enemies did, they had come prepared for combat in darkness. Blowing up the lighthouse and making it burn like a beacon would fry any night vision equipment and blind anyone unfortunate enough to be wearing it. It was what Pearce had been hacking before, getting into the equipment and shutting down the auto-gating technology that would've protected their owners, leaving them double unprepared for the attack.

It was hard to gauge how much of an advantage it gave Pearce, or how long it would last. Trained soldiers could fight on instinct and recovered quickly and adapted to new circumstances, there was no reason to suspect Blume had brought anything but their best to bear against them.

Still lit by the brightness of the distant flames and the occasional flashes of lightning, Mia saw Pearce emerge from behind one of the vans, press his back against it and pause for a moment. He ducked down, stepped forward and swiped the feet away from the man who edged around the back of the van. The man tried to roll away, but Pearce lunged for him, got hold of him and yanked him back, displaced some of the combat gear, shoved the man away and brought his gun up, tearing through the man's exposed neck. Pearce didn't stay, he was moving too fast to allow the soldiers to surround him, bring him down with sheer numbers. They had parked the vans strategically against an assault from the water, but Pearce was behind that line now and using the cover to drop in and out of sight as he pleased, striking fast and hard and was gone before his enemies could make him a target. The shots aimed for him bit into the vans, into the kiosk, into tree trunks where he'd been a moment ago, only for him to swing around instantly, back between them with the BAR.

Soldiers stationed further up and down the shore were already mobilising and converging on them. Shaking off how rattled she was, no longer wasting time on watching Pearce, Mia ran for cover before her chance was lost.

As it turned out, Pearce didn't seem to need any backup. In fact, Mia's impression was her presence bothered him more than helped. He wasn't used to fighting alongside someone else, he covered his own angles, watched his own back. The small advantaged of blinded enemies had dropped him in their middle and it was where he was doing the worst damage.

Mia found a well-guarded spot, on the wall below street-level, crouched behind a bench and picked off whoever she could with her rifle. The soldiers' clothing was bulletproof, of course, but the impact of bullets still slowed them down or knocked them off their feet and she aimed for the weak spots she knew about. Along the neckline and the faces, their hands and the weapons they held, bullets biting into ankles and feet, anything that'd take them out of the fight.

Without the thunderstorm, they'd have to worry about helicopters or drones, but they couldn't fly in the wind. Mia briefly wondered why Blume hadn't postponed their assault, waited until the worst had passed. Perhaps they thought they wouldn't need that advantage, or perhaps there was some other reason Mia didn't know about. At any rate, not having to defend against attacks from above as well was certainly welcome.

A group of three soldiers came running down the path, throw themselves into cover behind a van, Mia tracked their movements, waited until they'd be visible again, but she heard Pearce fire the BAR in their direction. The van dipped to a side as the bullet punctured a tyre. Another shot and a thin line of fire traced a path under the van, lit the puddle of liquid that had collected there.

Looking back, Mia spotted Pearce on top of a bench, gun levelled at the van. He shot again and this time the fuel finally ignited properly, the fire tracing back into the tank. The van exploded, adding another point of searing brightness, rending the van useless as cover. Mia coughed when the wind brought a gust of black smoke her way. She saw the scattered bodies of the soldiers who'd been taking cover behind it. Two weren't moving, the third was struggling back to his feet groggily.

Mia took aim, but didn't shoot, he didn't seem to try to get back into the fight, he was merely trying to get away. She lowered her gun, looked back to where Pearce had been, found him taking a running jump up along the side of the kiosk, where two soldiers had their back pressed against it. They'd seen him approach and fired at him, but missed. The men withdrew from the kiosk to get Pearce back into their sight, but he'd dropped down behind it, where they couldn't see him, circled around it and came at them from the side. One took a burst of bullets into the face. The second man whipped around, but Pearce used the BAR to smash his gun aside and the shots hissed past him. Pearce stepped in close and simply punched his fist into the man's face. The man staggered, but would've held his balance, but Pearce untangled their guns and snapped the butt of his rifle up, into the man's chin. This time, he dropped back, clearly dazed, tried to bring his own gun back up, but Pearce had stepped back, brought the BAR up and shot him.

Pearce stepped over him before he'd even stopped twitching.

Another van came driving down the path, it swerved to a halt a little away, spewed out at least six men. Mia flinched when suddenly a solid shadow loomed by her side, ready to fight, but a slow shudder of relief ran through her when she recognised Pearce.

"We need to go," he said, voice rough from the fight, breathing a little harder, but he seemed miraculously unharmed in all of this. More vans became visible in the distance, driving toward them.

Mia nodded and slipped to her feet. She opened fire on the first van, more suppressant fire than any attempt to hit anyone. A step behind her, she sensed Pearce make a sharp movement, and watched him throw something she recognised, with disconcerting slowness, as a grenade. She'd seen them in Pearce's arsenal in the lighthouse, but had missed him equipping them. The grenade didn't have a timed fuse, but it exploded on impact, giving the people close to it no chance to avoid it. The detonation wasn't strong enough to topple over the fan, but it scattered the men who had been hiding behind it, injuring or even killing them

Pearce stepped past her, his hand on her arm for just a second to remind her to keep moving. She ran after him, up the steps to street-level. For the moment, there was no pursuit.

* * *

Mia was braced for a car chase. Considering the size of this operation, there was no way Blume would simply let them go just because they overwhelmed them on the shoreline. There had to be contingencies in place for that, it wasn't the first time Blume did this sort of thing — though the first time on American soil, as far as Mia knew — it wasn't even the first time they had gone toe to toe with Aiden Pearce. Blume knew what they were up against and they certainly knew what it was going to take. 

And, indeed, there was a struggle, but if Mia wasn't partisan, she'd feel like the game was unfairly biased in Pearce's favour. After everything she'd learned from Ray and Frewer in her time with them, after everything she knew about the future of IT and what Blume could do with that tech, she had expected it to be a harder fight.

Pearce took the wheel of the 770S and took it to the street without any preamble. Mia kept her gun close, in case there was pursuit and she knew there'd be.

She didn't like how she'd been given a moment to calm down and process what was happening, sitting in the welcoming, soft leather of the expensive sports-car. It gave her time to realise what had just happened, made her remember the heat of the detonated lighthouse as it rolled over her, the hard, unforgiving beat of the boat as it crashed on the breakwater. It made her remember the subtle scent of fresh spilled blood mixing with the ozone of the thunderstorm. Her arm and shoulder remembered to ache under the recoil of her weapon. The more her heartbeat and breathing slowed down, the tighter her chest seemed to become at the realisation that this was far from over.

"Pearce…" she said and didn't know why and what she should follow it up with. He glanced at her and she could see a smirk in his face, slight and unpleasant, vanished as he focussed on the street again.

"Relax," he drawled the word, low rasp in his voice, something like mockery, but the sheer confidence it conveyed grounded her a little. "I got this."

She wanted to argue, but didn't really see the point, tried to concentrate on her surroundings again, get back into the battle-calm she'd lost in the respite.

It had been nearly ten years since she'd last been in Chicago, years in which technological advancement had radically altered the surface of the city, here so much more than in any other place in the world. Still, she recognised it, rushing past outside the window, some vague map coming alive in her mind, pinpointing her position in all of this. In Pearce's mind, this map would be sharp and flawless, she wouldn't be surprised if he'd foregone the augmentation on his Lens and navigated by his senses and experience alone.

Mia was braced for a car chase. But there wasn't one, not really.

Like a well-trained dog, Chicago seemed to follow even the smallest gesture of its master, anticipating what he wanted it to do in ways only modern technology could do. In the years since Blume had refined its ctOS and network and prediction algorithms, it hadn't been pushing Pearce out at all, it had allowed him to ingrain himself into the very core.

The artists would be tempted to call it magic, _techno_ magic. Traffic lights changed ahead of them, allowing Pearce to drive at full speed. The cops had set up barricades, blocked off large swathes of the city so there weren't many other cars or pedestrians to worry about. In their effort to hem him in, the cops had opened the way for him. Boulders sprang up and closed the roads off whenever a police cruiser or Blume elite car tried to cut them off. Sirens howling impotently along the sidelines, reduced to unwilling spectators in a one-man show.

Heading for Brandon Docks, Pearce made a small detour, crossed the river twice and lost most of the pursuers as the bridges opened and closed for him.

Finally, crossing into the industrial zones, Mia really did relax a little, even though Pearce wasn't slowing down. They had left the police barricades behind long ago. No doubt their enemies were still casting about for them in the chaos Blume itself had caused when they blacked out the entire shoreline, in the thunderstorm which might or might not take down other parts of the grid, in the confusion caused by the explosion of the lighthouse and the eagerness of Blume and city authorities to get their cover story out to the public before people's recordings flooded the internet and its breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

The thunderstorm had calmed down by now, lightning was distant and the rumble of thunder had grown faint. Instead, a downpour had started, drenching the streets and hopefully keeping helicopters and drones on the ground.

Pearce took a sharp turn into a narrow side street and then slowed down, brought the car to an unexpected smooth halt. Mia realised she'd been drifting, still clutching her gun, but with Pearce's hacks all but clearing the way for them, she had almost forgotten she might still be having a job.

Frowning, she looked at him.

"Just a second," he said. He let the engine running as he got out of the car and hurried to the fence they had stopped in front of. He pulled up his collar against the rain.

The area beyond the fence was an abandoned train-yard, high, dry grass growing between old tracks, some abandoned wagons left to rust and a ramshackle looking, two-story hall ahead of them.

Mia watched as Pearce picked the padlock on the gate and pushed it open. He made eye contact with her and then waved at her. It took a moment for Mia to realise what he wanted, then she slipped into the driver's seat and drove the car through the gate. In the rear-view mirror, Mia watched with amusement as Pearce closed the gate and put the padlock back in place, probably one of the most old-school things he had done all year.

"Stay," he called as he walked back to the car and Mia was about to relinquish the driver's seat.

She did't get to drive very far, only into the warehouse, where they parked amid industrial debris and beside a scratched-up, forty years old muscle car.

"That was the plan?" Mia asked as she got out of the car. "Blow up the lighthouse, take them head-on and… I didn't know you could still do that with ctOS access. That system was supposed to become _harder_ to hack."

Pearce pushed a hand through his wet hair. He took off his jacket and shook out the wetness irritably.

He tilted his head a little at her. "Who said it's easy?" he asked.

"But that…" Mia insisted, realised she was gesturing back the way they'd come, but wasn't entirely sure if the direction even was correct. It didn't matter, she was pointing at the entirety of the city anyway. "Well, it was impressive," she finished, somewhat inadequately. "No wonder Blume's bringing out the big guns against you."

"It's not me," Pearce said, shaking his head. "Blume wants their new OS to be flawless. No hacks, no exploits, no backdoors, no access unless you pay for it. It's not me they're after. It's everyone. Getting me is just good marketing and getting Frewer is a bonus. The only they'd celebrate getting is T-Bone."

After what she'd just seen Pearce do to ctOS, Mia wasn't sure why Blume shouldn't be after him personally, but she couldn't figure out how to argue the point. She felt tired, she had barely slept and the adrenaline spike that had kept her going was quickly dropping into combat comedown, leaving her feeling drained. Pearce showed no such signs, gaze sharp and focussed and each move crisp and precise. No indication that the fight might have been taking a toll on him, she briefly caught herself staring at his knee, but realised she didn't even know which one was supposed to be damaged.

He slipped his jacket back on. "Come on, we've got to get out of Chicago before BCP and the cops regroup."

* * *

The radio chattered on with bad reception, Mia listened to the news as they tried to pierce together what had happened, just off the shore of downtown, but reliable reports still seemed to be sparse. Several hours had passed, dawn was creeping over the horizon and traffic started to fill the highway, but it was mostly going into the city while they were leaving it behind. Mia had expected a long list of casualties, but the news reported none. They said the lighthouse had been abandoned and deserted and they didn't even mention anything about a shootout on the Lakefront Trail. BCP must have cleaned up all along the shore. For some reason, it bothered her that she didn't know how many people had died, she glanced at Pearce, wondering if he had kept count, if she could ask him and receive an answer. 

By the time they left the city limit, T-Bone called. The old muscle-car had no bluetooth speakers, so Pearce merely turned up the volume on his phone, giving Mia a chance to hear.

_"You got out all right?"_ T-Bone asked.

"We're fine," Pearce said. He looked over Mia. "Not a scratch."

There was a pregnant pause on the other end, Ray huffed and then said, _"We're taking the scenic route, should be there tonight. Keep the barbecue going."_

"Sure," Pearce said. "Take care."

He hung up, rested his hand back on the steering wheel limply.

"Where are we going anyway?" Mia asked.

"Pawnee," Pearce said and managed to make it sound like a dirty word, even though he hadn't put any special emphasis on it. "We'll do some _camping."_

This time his misgiving was obvious.

"Not your favourite past-time, huh?"

Pearce snorted and shook his head. "No," he said and for a long time it seemed like he wasn't going to say anything else. He took a breath, then said, "There's a trailer park outside Pawnee, it used to be a lot of antigovernment people, dropouts, rednecks. The Pawnee Militia used to recruit there, but since they became Blume Corporate Police they aren't too welcome. Ever heard of Offliners?"

"Vaguely," Mia said. "Off-the-grid people, right?"

"Yeah… not just that. They're off the grid, yeah, but… well, they reject all modern tech. Give them a few more years and you've got cult on your hands, maybe even some kind of eco-terrorism."

"That's where we're going?"

"It's one of the few places Blume can't look. They are considered crazy, but mostly harmless. Government would have to crack down hard to break them up and that's not worth the possible fallout. We can hide there for a few days and it's close to Blume HQ."

Mia let this run through her mind a few times.

"I guess I'm not going to see Rose flying around there."

"No," Pearce agreed, but he cracked a small smile at the thought. "And it's best to keep your phone out of sight. On the upside, no one's gonna mind our guns."

It turned out, 'trailer park' didn't quite begin to describe the sprawling area occupied by trailers, shacks and tents and a handful of log cabins. It looked huge, crawling away from the highway, into the forests and up the rocky hills beyond Pawnee. The thunderstorm had rolled over it without doing it any favours, leaving behind what looked like a settlement out of some post-apocalyptic fantasy.

Flags were flying above many of the trailers, stars and stripes mostly, some confederate flags and the occasional defaced version of Blume and other tech companies.

Mia had been driving the last stretch, after they'd stopped at a supermarket to stock up on food and some other necessities and Pearce had actually been dozing in the passenger seat while the radio droned on without revealing any actual news.

The car rumbled along a muddy path between the rows of trailers, but the people living their only spared them a very brief look as they passed. Small lines of smoke climbed into the air from barbecues or camp fires, bigger bulks of smoke came from diesel generators. A group of teenagers were staging a race with their motorbikes, narrowly braked before they collided with them.

One of them shouted an insult after them, but that was the only aggressive reaction to their presence.

"The blue one," Pearce directed her, stretching out in his seat and yawning. The brief nap seemed to have fully rejuvenated him.

The blue trailer stood in an U-shape with two other, somewhat smaller trailers. An awning stood in front of the door at its side, its edges torn and uneven, knocked out of place by weather and general neglect.

With a paper-bag full of food and another bag with fresh clothes and toiletries, Mia followed Pearce into the trailer. It was surprisingly spacious, run-down but clean, if one discounted the thin layer of dust that had settled on every surface. A kitchenette spanned one wall, two benches faced a table on one end, a narrow couch was affixed to the wall facing the kitchenette, a cabinet hung low above it, made the couch somewhat less inviting.

Looking around, Mia spotted the bunk-bed at the other end of the trailer. She dropped the bags off on the dining table and stepped to the beds, gauging their size.

"So… are we sleeping in shifts?" she asked. "Because I don't know how I feel about potentially spooning with you."

She looked at Pearce, watched the frown on his face slowly dissipate and for a moment she was convinced he'd say something extremely dirty, but his expression settled and he only shrugged.

"The two others are ours, too," he said, gesturing vaguely towards the outside. "Pick your roommate."

Mia sighed, walked back to the bag and started digging through. "You know what? I don't care. I just want to take a shower and go to sleep."

"We passed the bathrooms on the way in," Pearce said. He picked a packet of Oreos from top of the groceries bag, pulled his head in so he didn't knock on the cabinet when he dropped on the couch. He tore open the packet.

"Great," Mia muttered, but she wasn't particularly surprised. "How long are we staying?"

She didn't expect the question to be a difficult one. Everything else had to been meticulously planned, up to and including a full-scale assault by Blume's private army, but Pearce was silent for a moment too long and his face was grim, despite the Oreo he'd just bitten into.

"Not long," he said evasively. "Go get some rest first."

* * *

Mia had been worried falling asleep would take some time, her mind reeling in the aftermath of everything that had happened. She wasn't too keen on reviewing the fight, the people who had died and whose death now seemed to be completely ignored by the public. The radio had been blaring in the bathrooms as well, but still the news was silent. The story so far was that lighthouse explosion was an accident and there wasn't even a peep on events on the shore. Running a coverup on that scale took some doing, even for a corporation the size of Blume. Without internet connection, Mia couldn't tell how much of the truth had seeped out online, but traditional media were certainly not reporting it. 

It turned out, her body was tired enough that the hot water of the shower and the short, but cold walk back to the trailer took it out of her. The bunk bed she fell into was crisply clean, welcoming and she dropped asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

When she woke up, it was late in the afternoon, a few thin rays of sunlight had managed to come through the clouds and cut across the room.

The sweet scent of a joint had climbed in through the open window as she got up and stretched. Through the window, she spotted an elderly woman sitting in a chair on top of her trailer, leisurely smoking a joint as the sunset fell on her face.

Mia's limbs were a little sore from the fight and the ungentle collision with the breakwater, but nothing she wouldn't shake off with a little exercise. She heard voices from outside, Pearce's deep rasp, but she didn't understand what he was saying.

Rubbing her eyes, she slipped into her boots and pulled a sweater on, then pushed the door open.

Pearce lounged in a folding chair under the awning, his legs up on an upturned crate and a bottle of beer in his hand. By his side was a table with a pack of paper plates, two six-packs of beer and a plastic bucket of potato salad. Just outside the awning, steaks were sizzling on the barbecue. Ray stood over them, but he'd turned away to gesture with the tongs at Pearce.

"That's bullshit," Ray snapped. "And you know it."

The homely atmosphere immediately drained away, even the smell of steak — and pot — wasn't going to bring it back.

"Ah, Mia," Pearce greeted her and Mia didn't really like how he'd latched on to her as a way to deflect whatever argument he was having with Ray.

"What's up?" she asked anyway.

"We're having a disagreement," Pearce said with thin mockery.

Mia found another chair leaned against the trailer, picked it up and unfolded it, sat down by the table.

"I think we should move on Blume immediately," Pearce said.

"And that's dangerously stupid," Ray said immediately. "All the people who came for us in the lighthouse? Where do you think they are now?"

"Some of them are dead," Pearce pointed out deadpan.

"And the others are crawling all over Tech Meadows!" Ray paused for a moment, turned away to pick one of the steaks up and turn it around. A little quieter, he added, "You mass-murdering them didn't even put a dent in their numbers, sorry for your ego."

"It's not a problem," Pearce said, unimpressed. "It's an advantage. The whole place is full of strangers who don't know their way around. The chain of command becomes unreliable, nobody knows what's going on and who's in charge. Now's the _best_ time to move, _before_ they reorganise."

Ray didn't answer, pushed the tongs on the meat to test them.

"Who wants medium rare?" he asked, clearly trying to sound amiable, but his anger was still tangible.

"I'll take it," Mia said. She'd already shovelled potato onto a plate, she'd last eaten yesterday night, before going to bed and the Oreo she'd snatched from Pearce before falling asleep really didn't count. She pushed the potato aside to make room for the steak.

"Besides," Ray said as if the interruption hadn't happened. "We can't make a move without Wyland. Just contacting him will be risky. If Blume's watching him…"

"Now's the time when they're stretched thinnest," Pearce insisted. "I can get to Wyland, I'll get him to move things along."

Ray's mood darkened even more. "It blows up," he asserted. He spoke slowly, as if to an idiot, using the tongs to emphasis every single word. "You attack Blume HQ tomorrow we're all for the flies. I don't know why you don't see it."

Pearce regarded him in silence for a long minute, contemplating him. Slowly, he shook his head, "I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood something," he said. "Are you seriously waiting for when it's going to be _safe_ to move on Blume?"

The incredulity was nothing but pretence and mockery, uncompromisingly levelled at anyone who happened to attract his ire. Even casually relaxed in a folding chair, still with that bottle limply dangling in his lax fingers, Pearce looked like a predator, fixing his gaze on Ray without blinking.

"I'm waiting for when it won't be suicide," Ray insisted, clearly not daunted by the subtle threat Pearce was trying to weave. "And you should, too."

He turned back to the barbecue, dropped his voice and sounded almost bored. "The times when all you had to do was hit hard to get your way are over. You're an intelligent man, Aiden, start acting like it again."

Pearce laughed, entirely without humour, then took a sip from the beer.

"I'll take medium well," he said nonchalantly.

Already laboriously sawing at her meat with the plastic knife, Mia spotted Frewer appear from around the trailer. He held a box in his hand as he approached and set it down on the table, where Pearce picked it up. It looked like homemade cookies inside.

"From a neighbour," Frewer explained.

He looked around uncertainly, clearly picking up on the charged atmosphere.

"It's all set up," he said then. "We have power. We have internet, but…" he wagged his head from one side to the other. "Be careful. If the proxies fail. We. Every alarm will go off."

"Because no one here uses the internet?" Mia asked, chewing.

"Yes," Frewer nodded. "And. No ctOS access. Just regular internet."

"I can set up a meet with Wyland," Pearce said. Smirking a little, he put the box back on the table. "Better only have one of those," he remarked.

Mia looked up. "What's it with the pot in this place?"

"It grows reasonably well in the more protected parts," Pearce said. "Keeps this place afloat. Well, weed and guns and hired thugs. You can also buy and sell pretty much anything that's not high tech around here. No one's gonna ask where anything comes from."

"Or where it goes," Ray added ominously. "Frewer? Steak?"

"Only if it's dead," he said.

Ray shrugged, turned around and stepped to the table to pick up a plate, slapped a steak on it and handed it to Pearce silently. It took another moment before Ray spoke again.

He said, "Here's my compromise. You set up your meet with Wyland and see what he has to say." He looked at Mia and took a breath, clearly unhappy with what he was offering. "It's you and Mia going in, I get that. It's your call. All I'm saying is that we've come too far to botch it all now, because… you can't keep your feet still, Aiden."

"It's not impatience," Pearce stated and then repeated it. "I'm not impatient. I see an opportunity."

Ray frowned, took an audible breath, but said nothing, just watched Pearce. Some silent duel of willpower and for once, it was Pearce who relented.

"The guys at Blume, they'll be thinking like you do," Pearce explained. "Safety in numbers and all that shit. They'll think they got us by surprise in the lighthouse, that we're on the retreat. It's the exact right moment to go in the offensive."

Ray shook his head, but it was a more thoughtful gesture this time.

"Too many moving parts," he said quietly.

"Yeah," Pearce agreed. "For them, too, and our operation is a lot neater than theirs."

Ray didn't look convinced, but the lines on his forehead softened just a little as he considered what Pearce had said. He moved his head from side to side in indecision and doubt, calculating the possibilities and the moving parts he'd mentioned, trying to assess the chances.

"Meeting Wyland is a risk in itself," he pointed out. "Don't you have any little go-betweens left you can use?"

"Some," Pearce conceded. "But I want to meet face to face."

Ray narrowed his eyes at him, seemed to remember something else and turned back, slapped the last steak on the grill from where it had been sitting in its paper on the table. He turned the other steak over, tested it and grimaced.

"It's dead," he announced and Frewer dutifully picked up a plate and held it out to Ray.

"I see what you're doing," Ray said to Pearce as he put Frewer's steak on the plate and the other man withdrew to where he was seated on the steps of the trailer door.

"Really."

"Really," Ray said pointedly, but it was hard to say if he was angry or just resigned. He sighed, clenched his mouth into a tight line and said, "Your steak's getting cold."

* * *

_The Vigilante's ice-blue eyes are narrowed to dangerous slits, a frosty counterpoint to the glittering lights of the cityscape sprawling out around him, a gorgeous view offered by the penthouse rooftop he's standing on. The distant lights trace the sharp edge of a cheekbone and the thin, bleeding cut that trails a little blood down his face and into the dark stubble along his jaw. He's holding himself perfectly still, gaze fixed on the man pacing up and down in front of him._

_Expensively and tastefully dressed, 'Red' Devine paces casually, entirely self-assured. He is the head of the Devine family, infamous leaders of the Chicago Club, the top-tier of organised crime in the US. His hair is no longer red and it's been a while since he's had to get his hands dirty, he has henchmen for that now._

_He walks a few more steps to the body of a woman, trussed up and dropped on the floor, artfully arranged to show off her long legs and curved hips, even as she regains consciousness._

_Devine says, "I am really very sorry to this."_

_He looks up at the Vigilante. "I think one of the history and the people will see the cause. My proposal is better."_

_"I'll never cheat my virtues," the Vigilante snarls, white teeth gleaming._

_Devine laughs, "Do not deceive yourself. Whether you run, regardless of the number of the civilians to security, you can never stops the members of the same family. You will always be one of us-s-s…"_

The DVD skipped, stuttered, but then continued.

Huddled somewhat more familiarly close than was entirely comfortable on the couch in the trailer, Mia took a handful of popcorn and chewed down on it.

"You were right," she said. "It's better with subtitles. But also somehow worse. I didn't even know it was out yet."

"It's not," Frewer said. "That's why we have the subtitles. The way they are. Yes."

On the screen, the blue-eyed Vigilante was listening indignantly to the crime boss's speech which would, inevitably, culminate in him threatening to kill the woman.

"I don't know about you, but I find this really weird," Mia said. "I read about this guy," she pointed at the screen with a hand full of popcorn. "And his dirty little porn history."

"You shouldn't believe everything you read," Aiden remarked from the Mia's right side. "They should've tried consulting with me."

"So it's not real? I can find this guy hot again?"

"Well," he said slowly. "Everyone has dirty secrets. Some dirtier than others. But it's not all bad. I like the part where I'm having a threesome with the hard-nosed lady cop and the idealistic hacktivist."

He titled his head towards T-Bone. "Better than what I got in real life."

"And they all survive, too," T-Bone remarked acidly. "But that's Hollywood for ya. No realism."

On the screen, Devine had his henchmen punch the Vigilante in his flawlessly chiselled features, then proceeded to threaten to kill the woman by throwing her over the side of the building.

_A slow smirk spreads across the Vigilante's face, blood dripping down the side from his split eyebrow, making him appear even more fierce. The henchman who has just punched him takes an instinctive step away from him._

_The Vigilante says, "You think you can control city?"_

_Devine looks at him, realisation dawning in him, but slowly as the music builds up the tension._

_"Looking around you!" Devine makes a sweeping gesture. "What do you seeing?"_

_Undeterred, the Vigilante tilts his head and says, "Do you think you can control I?"_


	6. Springtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The seasons in the sun are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Recap:** In _Firewalker,_ Marcus makes a passing mention of Jacks' planning to open a restaurant with a friend. Deliah appears in _Quaint Old World_ as Jacks' girlfriend/wife. Aiden shot a little snuff flick in _The Dark End of the Street. Night of the Fox_ is a Hollywood film adaption of some of the vigilante's exploits.

 

In the calm after the morning rush, Edwin Simmons, chef and owner of Le Café Viennese, swiped surplus flour from the counter. Soft sunlight cut golden streaks across the room and he was hoping the weather would hold today. For the last few days, he and his staff had been constantly on edge, in case another thunderstorm rolled over them, washed away the relaxed spring atmosphere and sent his guests scrambling to get inside from the seating area along the river.

"I'm telling you!"

He glanced up. Through the open door of the kitchen, he spotted his staff, students Seth and Marcella, hanging around the sliding door, conspiratorially positioned to make wall and curtains hide them from view from outside. He frowned, gave the counter another swipe, then dropped the towel to stride out to see what was going on, glad there were only few guests seated inside at the moment and all of them seemed occupied with their own conversation or phones.

"Nah," Marcella said. "I thought he'd be older."

"He is _older,"_ Seth insisted. "Just… I saw him when I took his order, right? And he's old. Like older than my Dad."

Marcella pulled a skeptical grimace. "Yeah, but… but old means… like… more beige."

"Are you serious?" Seth exclaimed. "Beige? That's your whole point?"

She shrugged, shook her head. "It's a state of mind. He just doesn't look like I thought the vigilante would look."

They both jostled guiltily when Simmons got close enough and peered past Seth through the window at the man they were obviously debating. He was seated with his body angled away from the building, face towards the sun. A denim jacket and motorcycle helmet was on the chair by his side and a laptop was open in front of him.

"Should we call the cops?" Seth asked and his expression was slightly miserable, unhappy that his boss had happened upon the situation, but unable to suppress the question.

"What's wrong?" Simmons asked.

"Seth thinks that guy's the vigilante," Marcella explained. "But I think he's just seeing things."

Seth shot her an annoyed look. "I looked at his face!" he insisted. "Everyone knows his face, it's everywhere and…"

Marcella reached across to him and nudged him teasingly. "Admit it, when _Night of the Fox_ came out you got really interested in him."

"Hey, I had to write a paper on it, it's not my fault."

"You had to write a paper on a dumb blockbuster movie?"

" _No,_ fuck you," Seth said annoyed. "I had to write a paper on the morality of adapting real-life crimes and criminals to the screen in light of how that'd glorify illegal actions and encourage people to do the same."

"Language, Seth," Simmons admonished, but his heart wasn't really in it. He was studying the man the two had been discussing. As Simmons watched, the man turned his face away from the sun and towards the laptop, making the profile of his face visible. He wore a pair of reflective aviators, hiding his eyes from view, his short cropped hair seemed dark from the distance, perhaps some grey there, catching the light as he moved.

"Wasn't he a computer guy?" Simmons asked. "That laptop is at least ten years old. I had a model just like that."

"Well, he's obviously trying to be incognito," Seth insisted, slowly turning a little petulant in the face of his colleagues' lack of faith. He hesitated, looked away from maybe-the-vigilante and at his boss.

"Shouldn't we call the cops?" he asked again.

Simmons gave it some thought. He couldn't say he had an opinion on the man's identity. He'd seen some news pieces and pictures of the vigilante, of course, same as everyone else, but he was hard pressed to remember many details beyond the most commonplace facts: white male mid-thirties? But that was years ago, so he must be in his forties or fifties now. Could be, Simmons supposed. Could be _not_. On reflex, he glanced up at the cameras keeping watch over the Riverwalk, then looked up and down along the promenade, uneasily making sure nothing was out of place.

"No," he decided eventually. "If that's just some guy trying to relax, I don't want my name in the news because the cops harassed him. And if it's the vigilante, he's not doing anything, probably took the day off to enjoy the weather. Just let him be."

He paused pointedly and added, "By the by, he's obviously still waiting for his order. Maybe get that done, I don't pay you for gossiping."

The two took the hint, bustled into motion instantly. Marcella resumed her work of collecting dirty dishes on a tray and Seth hurried behind the bar counter to the coffee maker.

#

With the double espresso balanced on the tray, Seth made his way across to the vigilante and tried his hardest to appear as if he didn't walk a small half-circle to steal a look at what was on the man's laptop. He caught a glimpse of a short-haired blonde from an odd angle, she moved out of frame and the vigilante shifted in his seat, startled Seth who hadn't realised how close he'd come.

Seth smiled awkwardly, silently praying for the vigilante not to take offence. Up close again, Seth was even more convinced he'd been right all along, but also… less convinced. He knew it didn't make much sense and he certainly didn't plan to confide with Marcella. The man _looked_ the part, not his clothes, which were casual and unassuming, a faded Blackhawks T-shirt and worn boots. His behaviour was non-threatening in every way, polite, but reserved. Nothing special about him, really, just some guy having a coffee while he caught up with his favourite drama show or something.

Right?

Seth remembered where he was, managed to go through the motions of lowering the tray and putting the espresso cup down on muscle memory alone. He remembered not to stare.

He smiled, he hoped it didn't look as shaky as it felt.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asked.

He could tell the vigilante was about to dismiss him, but he looked around the table and said, "Sugar, please."

The thing about his voice, Seth thought as if he was actually planning to lay it all out for someone later, no one really knew what his voice sounded like. They had a incomprehensible amount of pictures and videos of him, however blurry or tampered with they might be. But the only reliable source of his voice, near as Seth could tell, was that awful snuff movie from years ago, which had a bad habit of resurfacing on the internet and remained one of the most popular searches in connection with the vigilante. Seth would swear every oath on the planet it was the same face — give or take a few unkind years — but he'd swear that oath it was the same _voice,_ too.

Now all he needed to do was figure out how to get the idea across to Marcella and Simmons without seeming like one of these embarrassing vigilante apologists that tended to litter the comments section accompanying that terrible video.

"Uh, sure," Seth said, hurried away and picked up the sugar dispenser from an unoccupied table. As he turned back around, the vigilante had settled back in his chair, angled his face into the sun again and pushed the lid of the laptop down a fraction. The direction of his gaze was hidden by the shades, he could be looking anywhere, even directly at Seth, who felt caught and exposed.

Having no other option, he carried the sugar back and said, "There you go, sir."

"Thanks," the vigilante said, straightened a little and picked up the sugar, dumped a generous amount into his coffee. Thusly dismissed, Seth hovered in indecision for a heartbeat longer, than flittered away and back inside, swinging around to stand by the curtained window.

"You're right," Marcella said and held her phone in front of his face. It was too close and for a moment he saw nothing but a blurry shape. He snatched the phone from her hand to look down on it.

"It's him," Marcella said. "What do you think he's doing?"

"Having coffee?" Seth offered. "And watching some video of a blond woman."

"Like a movie?" she asked, thought about it and added. "Or, oh my god!… Porn?"

"No! Who watches porn in public?" he inquired. "It was just her face, anyway. I saw it only for a second."

They were silent for a moment, watching as the vigilante took a sip from the coffee, pushed the lid of the laptop open again and resumed whatever he'd been doing.

"Do you think…" Marcella whispered. "Do you think he's, you know, looking for someone?"

"Like someone he's… uh, hunting?" Seth asked back, matched her hushed tone without realising it. "I don't know."

They stood, badly hidden behind the doorway and the curtain as the vigilante did nothing more spectacular than drink coffee and stare at a laptop screen, sometimes he'd pause, or shift in his seat. After a little while, he briefly lowered his shades to slide the Lenses in his eyes, than put the shades back on.

"I mean…" Marcella said. "He has really nice arms. For an old guy."

"Yeah," Seth said noncommittally, hoped she'd pass over the fact that comparing the vigilante's arms with — to use a completely random example — _his,_ he wouldn't like the result. Old guy or not. Lightly, he said, "But he's got to, right?"

"You read up on this guy," Marcella said. "What's he like?"

"Uh," was the best Seth could come up with spontaneously. In his mind, he recounted some of the things he'd read in his research and tried to remember what conclusion he'd drawn about it all back then. "Not someone anyone would want to mess with."

Silence fell again for a time. The vigilante emptied his cup and pushed it aside. He settled his hand on the phone, moved the tips of his fingers over the sensitive screen.

"It's kinda cool, though," Marcella concluded quietly.

"What?" Seth shot her a look.

"Not _everything_ , obviously, but…" she started, frowned and rolled her eyes at him. "Come on, you know what I mean."

Seth tried a disapproving expression, knew it was phoney and finally just nodded. "I didn't put that in my paper, though."

The vigilante reached into his pocket and his small audience held its breath and released it with slightly disappointed relief when he hadn't pulled a gun, but what appeared to be a flash drive. He plucked it into the laptop, held it there for a second, then pulled it out again and slapped the lid closed.

"You know, I actually haven't seen the movie," Marcella remarked. "Is it any good?"

"It's very… badass," Seth said. "But I couldn't find a lot of facts that match up."

"Hey, uh, I think I want to go see it. You want to tag along? My treat."

"Yeah, I'd like to. For science," he said, chuckled a little.

The vigilante pushed his chair back and got up, slung his jacket over his arm.

"What do we do if he dines and dashes?" Marcella asked.

Seth didn't know how to answer that. He just held his breath as the vigilante picked up his helmet and reached for his phone with the other. He looked up and glanced around, his gaze lingering for a moment on the entrance of the café, Seth and Marcella froze in place. His gaze wandered away from them and he swiped his finger over the phone. In Seth's left Lens, the payment confirmation appeared, a short list of the double espresso and a generous tip.

Seth exhaled and Marcella subconsciously picked up on it and relaxed a little.

The vigilante strode away without a backward glance, heading towards the nearest steps leading back to street level. Just before he was out of sight, Seth and Marcella watched as he dumped the laptop in a litter bin as he walked by.

Barely five minutes later, a woman in a Corporate Police uniform came down the same steps he'd just taken. She stopped for a moment, then went to the bin and retrieved the laptop.

* * *

Nicky hummed appreciatively to herself as the scent of fresh-baked cake and coffee drifted into the small sunroom office. The house was a marvel, a true jewel, small and hidden enough it turned out to be surprisingly affordable. In the peace and quiet of the sunroom, surrounded by the small, lush garden she did her best work. Though it barely felt like work at all.

"Hey, Mom," Jacks stuck his head in and gave her a quick grin. "Do you want to try our new cake?"

Chuckling, she said, "What weird ingredient have you been trying this time?"

Still grinning, Jacks said, "Zucchini."

Arching her brows, Nicky passed a glance over the screen in front of her, giving her work a quick review before she decided she was due a break anyway and she wouldn't be able to focus with that delicious smell in the air.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," she said, mouth already watering.

The doorbell rang and she heard Weston yell _"I'll get it!"_ before she or Jacks could react. Weston had been their neighbour's kid, a stroke of luck Nicky thought they'd thoroughly deserved.

Weston's mother, overworked, but pragmatic and with a big heart, had taken both Nicky and Jacks under her wing. She'd intuitively known not to press Nicky for details, she never asked about Chicago and why Nicky had left it the way she had. She never _asked_ , but at the same time, she was always willing to listen. Without pressure, Nicky could dissect her thoughts and feelings at her own pace and on her own terms, it helped immensely.

As the years passed, Nicky sometimes wondered if she didn't own her the full story, but as the scars slowly faded, it didn't seem so important anymore.

Weston and Jacks had almost instantly befriended each other, though wildly different in temperament they had somehow found some common ground quickly. It had helped Jackson heal and because it helped Jacks, it helped her. She hadn't even noticed the moment when things were no longer this unreliable, tangled web of badly understood threats. At some point, the pain was gone and all she had to deal with was the mere _memory_ of pain.

It still flared up from time to time, she saw it in Jacks, too, when he remembered and got very quiet from one moment to the next, but it was nothing that had the power to stop either of them.

Deliah wrapped her arms around Jacks from behind, hugged him close then gave him a little push so he cleared the way.

"Hello, Mrs. Pearce!" Deliah greeted her, then looked back at Jacks. "What's it today? Chocolate avocado?"

"Just zucchini."

Weston appeared behind them, wearing an apron and oven mitts. "Ready?" he asked.

Nicky smiled, snapped the laptop she'd been working on closed and got up, followed them into the living room where Jacks, like the restaurant owner he was, had already prepared everything.

Nicky let herself drop into a comfortable armchair. Jacks and Weston served their experimental cake to the women, then joined them. Weston in the second armchair and Jacks and Deliah on the sofa, happy in the gentle sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Obscure Reference:** I picked the title of "Springtime" as a reference to Jacques Brel's "Le Moribond" — to the English speaker probably more familiar as "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks — due to the dichotomy of spring and death. While in Brilliancy, it's already clear that Aiden survives (because of the chronology issues from hell), Aiden himself does not know and he acts accordingly. That associative chain might be a bit long… (and Gunmetal Sky takes place in spring so it can even be considered redundant…)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Author's Note:** I got a minor thing about linguistics, it's like a reflex. So in correct French it should be "Le Café _Viennois"_ , but I americanised it for authenticity.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on 31/Oct/2016**


	7. Gunmetal Sky - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But man is not made for defeat..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note:** I wanted to hold off posting this until I'm reasonably sure part 2 won't take too long, but dealing with RL crap has whittled away my impulse control. It shouldn't be too long, though.
> 
> **Holy shit,** the English language needs to figure out if it's taze/tase/to taser/to tazer.
> 
> **About Josh:** As you may recall, the oc "Derek Wyland" was originally called "Josh" and I changed it because Ubi revealed a canon character by that name. Now it occurs to me canon!Josh could easily fill this role. Depending on the actual events in WD 2, I might use him, Derek was just Josh's false identity all along… **Unrelated** to that, I've looked at this Josh guy a little more closely and I really hope the idea that he might be Jacks is just paranoia brought on by the T-Bone reveal. (Josh seems too old, but otherwise, his attitude and even his looks are… worrying.)

[takes place may 2026] 

* * *

Mia hiked silently behind Pearce on the narrow trail through the woods. They'd been going for a good hour, though as a city kid, Mia had quickly lost most of her sense of direction and time in the thicket of lush green shrubbery and tall, dark trees. Sharp-angled rocks sometimes struck out from the thicket, landmarks for her gaze to linger on, but it was all hard to differentiate.

T-Bone had dropped them off some two miles away from Tech Meadows and the trail wound through the forest without branching off. She assumed Pearce, just as city-born and bred as she was, would just about manage not to get lost. Besides, this close to Blume HQ, phone reception was stellar and as long as they used only their regular phones, Blume had no way of thinking they were anything but normal people getting in touch with nature while geocaching.

_Are you sure?_ Mia wanted to ask. Desperately. _Are you sure it'll work? Are you sure Dave did his part? Are you sure we should go in so early? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?_

The reason she bit down on her lower lip instead of actually saying it aloud was because she might as well ask Pearce to lie to her face. The tense energy coming off his seemingly relaxed body was bad enough. His steely silence was another indicator of his state of mind, but the trail was too narrow to walk side by side so unless he looked back or the trail turned a sharp enough corner, she had no idea what his face might reveal.

Underneath their normal clothes, they wore a suit of bulletproof meta-material, 3D-printed to flawlessly fit their bodies. It'd block bullets and taser projectiles and offered some minor protection against any bladed weapon. It was also just the wrong side of stifling, a thin layer of sweat trying to form underneath the skin-tight suit.

The trail took a sharp left turn and vanished back into the trees, seemed almost to double back on itself a little further in, but Pearce stopped and looked the shrubs on the side of the path up and down. When he said nothing, Mia opened her own GPS app and checked their location. They'd have to go straight through the woods for another quarter mile until they reached the back wall of Tech Meadows.

Uncertainly, Mia glanced up at the patch of sky visible above. It wasn't noon-day bright, but evening was still a long way off and it would be some time to sundown when they'd get where they wanted to go.

The timing was this Dave's, too. He didn't want to break from his routines and tip some prediction software off.

"Are you… ? Uh…" she said.

Pearce had been about to step forward, gloved hands already raised to part the bushes, but he stopped and looked back at her.

"Question?" he asked.

She went through the game-plan in her mind, one carefully outlined step after the other, making it all sound suspiciously simple, easiest heist in the history of crime. A _nothing can go wrong_ type of situation.

Both Tobias and Ray were proud of their assembled arsenal. An EMP gun, based on the drones' design that delivered tiny projectiles and affected only a small radius. Just enough to introduce a minor error in the complex circuits Blume was using, creating small blind spot for them to slip past the surveillance on the lower floors of Tech Meadows.

Thirty second windows, Wyland had confirmed that errors of that duration wouldn't raise an alarm straightaway, but Blume was running a monitoring software on top of their systems, looking for a pattern in outages or errors. How often was going to be _too_ often was anyone's guess.

Wyland had also confirmed that Blume had had to roll back to using Profiler's old facial recognition software, rather than their own, considerably more sophisticated ID'ing system because the large number of new faces on the site had caused problems.

Pearce was silently, but visibly, pleased about this, though, as T-Bone was quick to point out, Pearce hadn't known that when he'd pushed his schedule through.

With Profiler still in the game, they could show their faces openly, probably could've walked in through the front gate if Pearce had had the time to social engineer them a few visitor passes. Blume used to host any number of tours, getting in that way might have been easy. It would, however, have put them on some monitoring radar. Too many people and systems would've known they were there and someone might have looked too closely at Pearce.

Mia adjusted the strap of her backpack.

"No," she lied and took a breath because her throat had gone too tight. Pearce didn't take his gaze away, dug it through her eyes and into her head, weighing every strained fibre of her being. He didn't ask if she wanted out. She had committed, letting her off the hook now wasn't in his interest.

Squirming away from his penetrating assessment, she swallowed dryly and started walking, pushing through the bushes.

"Let's go."

She felt his gaze dig into the back of her head for another moment, before she heard the rustle of leaves and breaking twigs as he followed. 

Tech Meadows was Blume's shining new flagship. It was rapidly growing to be not just a collection of office buildings and computer research labs with an oversized server farm underneath. It was meant to grow into it's own little village, with on-site apartments and shops from the generations' best and brightest. Planet Blume, free of any noteworthy government oversight. It looked pretty enough, unthreatening. Sweeping white architecture borrowed from every optimistic utopia ever conceived, lush green park with fountains and café. All of it, powered by clean, renewable energy. Even all the money that was pouring in, Blume made sure enough of it was spent on the environment and social equality programmes. They were recruiting not only college students with the best marks, but they were looking for the raw talent down in the poorest communities of the Wards, too. In a time when an entire generation had grown up within the ever-cresting waves of financial instability and political instability, Blume was a beacon of the American Dream.

You couldn't blame people for latching onto it all. In a way, Mia supposed, it was just easier to take Blume at face value, take their free services for granted and be glad that one thing in their lives was actually sorted in a satisfactory way.

The glamour of DedSec and Blume whistleblowers never outlasted what Blume was creating, even Chicago's penchant for larger-than-life criminals was only good for second-rate films, but the majority was behind Blume.

If Pearce hadn't found her, if she hadn't looked behind the curtain through his eyes, Mia guessed she'd be one of them. She'd never been one for a crusade, never quite the guts to go to the dark side, either. The people in the street, they didn't understand what Pearce was doing.

She wasn't sure she understood what he was doing even so.

"Pearce, can I ask something?"

She slowed down and he caught up with her, stepped a little closer in the thicket.

"Sure," he said.

"Have you thought of not doing this?"

She hadn't quite expected him to take her question completely seriously. It seemed rather late to ask it, but perhaps he thought she'd earned the right to, or perhaps the walk in the woods had given him more time to think than he'd wanted, just like her.

"I didn't want do this," Pearce said. "It's all T-Bone."

Mia frowned. Pearce had been pushing this plan forward from all the time since he'd brought her in, it seemed to have been his gig from the start and much of the planning bore his handiwork. He'd fight this hard about something he didn't even want?

"What do you mean?"

He took a long time before he answered. 

"You read about the fire in Millennium Point?"

"Of course," she said. She'd wondered if it had anything to do with him, but she'd wondered this about almost every spectacular or disastrous thing in Chicago since she'd left.

"It was…" he stopped abruptly and his voice was a little quieter as he continued. "It made a few things very clear."

He looked at her and said, "T-Bone thinks we have a chance. I don't."

It occurred to her that an Aiden Pearce who told the unabridged truth was its very own definition of frightening.

"But…"

A smile ghosted across his features, so faint it had to be authentic.

"Don't worry," he assured her. "I'm you're not dying today." 

"Well," she said a little helplessly. "That's good to hear, because I have plans for next week."

She lacked the guts to push him for more details, perhaps it was better to pretend she hadn't seen the desperation in all of the men she worked with. Better to pretend it hadn't crossed her mind how her chances of survival weren't all that good. You took jobs, as a hacker before, as Pearce's protege, as a bounty hunter, there was always a _risk._ She had ways to handle it, usually by not looking at it too closely until she was safely home and toasting her partners.

A yard of trimmed grass led up to the outer wall surrounding Tech Meadows. The wall itself was some nine feet high, smooth pale stone or concrete — or possibly something with a less mundane name — bent slightly outward and topped by a sweeping wire mesh which looked decorative on first look. It became foreboding the very moment you contemplated climbing over it.

Blume had all the tech to make their headquarters impenetrable, but because there were people constantly on-site, some working their own, self-set hours or even living there, many conventional security measures weren't viable. Heat, sound and motion sensors wouldn't work for the public perimeters of the place. Instead, Blume relied on ID'ing everyone who entered their grounds by facial recognition. They were also able to track unique features such as height and gait, once the system was fed enough data, an intermediary step before trans-material scanning of facial features became reliable.

Pearce looked up and down the length of the wall.

"It's higher than I thought," she said. "Thirty seconds is cutting it tight."

"Shoot the rope: five seconds," Pearce said as he set his backpack down and unzipped it. "Climb up: ten. Cross the wire: five. Jump down: two. You've got eight seconds to spare."

She eyed him critically. They'd trained it in an abandoned train-yard in Pawnee. She still wasn't sure if Pearce's greater strength was actually offset by him having to lug more weight around, seeing as most of that weight seemed to be muscle and willpower. It had been years since she'd ran with him, but for some reason, the best she could do was _still_ just to keep pace.

Privately, she suspected keeping at that physical peak took a tremendous toll on Pearce, but she didn't know what could be gained if she forced him to talk about it or admit some weakness or other. He wasn't going to slow down, if anything, it'd just make him more resentful.

They had considered doing a test run to see what the response was to a breach, but they had decided against it. A self-improving software was beaten easiest by giving it no chance to learn from exposure to the same situation. This counted for people as well as for Blume's swarm of security drones.

They were in a remote area of Tech Meadows. Blume was building an indoor swimming pool just beyond the wall, but it wasn't completed. Wyland had said construction had been halted due to a disagreement between the architect and Blume, so it was unlikely people were around, at the same time the building and it's construction scaffolding blocked observation by both people and stationary cameras.

Mia hefted the line gun and eyed the wires above, hoped the mesh was at least slightly magnetic. The lock would engage either way, but it'd slip into place quicker and easier.

Just far enough away that they wouldn't hinder each other, Pearce got ready, too. He sent a text to T-Bone, confirming they were in place. While there was no reason why Blume would be suspicious about texts or phone calls from their headquarter, they were quite capable to monitor and track it, which was why they had decided to keep communication to a minimum. Once they were inside, T-Bone wouldn't be able to help them anyway.

"Ready?"

A tiny, contrary voice at the back of Mia's head grumbled a 'no', but she forced it down, confirmed, "Ready." and was glad her voice sounded even enough.

Pearce saidnothing more, hefted the line gun in one hand and the EMP gun in the other. He shot the EMP projectiles at the wall, where they stuck and knocked out the networked sensors on that part of the wall.

Mia had shot the line up at the fence above, waited for the click as it locked. She pulled herself up. She didn't have a counter on her HUD, it'd just distract her. Halfway up, her arms started to burn, but she hauled herself all the way, gripped the wire mesh and swung over it without even bothering to check what she was dropping into.

Thankfully, it turned out to be lawn. She rolled back to her feet without, a little harder and more awkward than she'd have liked, the bulk of her backpack throwing her off. She hopped a few more steps forward to get a little further away from the wall, in case her close proximity caused an alarm to fire when the sensors came back on.

Pearce had landed almost at the same time and stood up straight by her side, faced the wall and as Mia regarded him, absent-mindedly shook out his left arm, flexing his fingers. 

Following the direction of his gaze, Mia saw that the rope had detached itself automatically the way the tiny chip in the lock mechanism had been programmed to do.

"Well," Mia said and couldn't think of anything to follow it up with.

Pearce arched his brows at her, his breathing already evening out. Without saying anything, he turned and strode towards the unfinished building.

A man sat on a tightly-packed pallet and smoked a cigarette. He was in shadow and the sun was slowly dipping too low for any glare, he wore a pair of fashionable sunglasses, though they did little to make him look like anything other than some corporate drone. He looked out of place among Blume's young and hip crowd, too.

As they got closer, the corners of his mouth dipped downward in a grimace and he slipped from his seat, picked up a black sheet from his side.

"We don't have time," he said roughly. At first, Mia thought he was afraid, but while his movement was quick, it wasn't unsteady and the displeasure in his face, she realised, went far deeper than his expression.

With the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he used both hands to pull the adhesive foil from the sheet, reach up and smooth it over Pearce's shoulder without asking first.

Mia got no greeting, either, just the slap of the foil to her shoulder. It caught the light when she moved, something not quite a QR code.

"I couldn't get your information into the system," Wyland said, facing Pearce. "Trying to output with anything _other_ than a Red Alert with your biometric data is just stupid."

He looked at Mia. "Maybe with you, but this'll work."

He crunched the sheet in his hand, took a deep drag from the cigarette and pressed the glowing end into the paper until it started smouldering in his hand.

"Some people just keep throwing errors with RealMe, that's our own little Profiler, just more intrusive. We don't know what the problem is yet," Wyland explained. "So people get tagged like this."

The fire gained strength, a tongue liking up high in front of his face and Wyland dropped it.

He looked at Pearce again. "I can confirm your virus is in the drone network and the surveillance. I don't know how long it's going to stay hidden, but up until then, you should only be an error message for RealMe."

Wyland poked the ball of paper with the tip of his shoe, ash flaked off.

He spread out his arms. "Well, that's it," he said and dropped his arms as if he'd ran abruptly out of energy to keep them up. He managed a shrug. "Oh yeah, by the way, you're both interns. That gives you access to level two, best I could do. Caretakers could go down to five, but they don't have a large turnover, two new ones would be a big deviation."

Mia knew Wyland had been DedSec, one of the Council of Daves, who somehow had managed to survive the darknet purge Blume had enacted in the wake of the terror attack on Millennium Point. No doubt there were more survivors hiding out somewhere. If they had any sense, they'd thrown away all their smart devices and computers.

"Thanks," Pearce said. "When we get it, I'll drop you a free copy."

Wyland chuckled, a low, gargling sound without any humour whatsoever. "If, Mr. Vigilante. I'm pretty sure you mean 'if'."

Mia found Wyland's casual nihilism aggravating and hard to take. She realised she'd been shifting her weight from one foot to the other, looked like she needed to take piss, but it was just nerves. Standing around like this, exposed and with only a false identity, thin like the foil. She had had no control over what Wyland had set up and plastered on her shoulder, she'd not have any input at all. She didn't even know if Wyland had bothered with an actual identity, or if he'd just used two random names which would stand up to a background check for all of two seconds.

She wanted to keep going. Moving targets were harder to hit. 

If Pearce felt anything like her, he certainly didn't show it. Holding himself still, his gaze rested on Wyland as if he might be able to read his mind if he stared hard enough, but there was nothing particularly menacing about it. Pearce was merely contemplating the other man and doing so not without sympathy.

"I wrote my will last night," Wyland added and laughed again. "I hope you did, too."

His sick smile passed over Mia.

Pearce chuckled, "I got nothing to give," he said mildly.

"Good on you," Wyland said and found some reservoir of energy to push himself into motion. His cigarette had burned to a stump and stubbed it out against a pristine steel pillar of the unfinished structure behind them, then tossed it a away into the rubble of the building site.

"I'll hold up my end," he said. "For as long as I can."

He waved listlessly with one arm, gave his sunglasses a little shove upwards on his nose and tucked his hands into his pockets as he turned and strode away.

"What did he mean?" Mia asked.

"He's our first line of defence," Pearce explained. He started walking in the other direction..

"We can't hack anything remotely," Pearce continued. "Someone on the inside has to do it. That's him. And it means he'll go down first."

"He's agreed?"

"He's DedSec," Pearce said and for a long minute, it seemed like he considered this explanation sufficient and wouldn't say anything else, but then he added, "It's his last shot at Blume."

"Like yours," Mia observed, knew she was prodding him a little, because of the conversation they'd had during the hike.

"Pretty much," Pearce agreed, as if it wasn't a big deal.

Mia looked back to where Wyland had vanished from sight, guessing she'd been wrong about him. It wasn't his _lack_ of passion that'd made him appear so blasé, it must be the opposite.

Up close, Tech Meadows was even more spectacular than their skyline had been, nestled between the natural hills and valleys of the landscape with a few high-rises towering above the highest peaks. Most of the central buildings weren't this tall, however, only three to five stories, sprawling on the ground in organically smooth shapes, sweeping roofs and open glass fronts.

Back where Pearce and Mia had made their entrance, Tech Meadows was rather less megalomaniacal. The swimming pool was just one construction site of several and the building activity had torn open the ground and ruined the lawn, bare walls didn't reflect the light and the delicate columns were still wrapped in plastic foil, surrounded by the occasional pile of trash or debris. Some of the buildings were fairly old, hastily erected without aesthetic considerations and dirtied in the years since.

Mia had braced herself for meeting people and there were enough of them around to make her glad she had, trailing after Pearce as he made a beeline for what looked like a run-of-the-mill office building with a small, paved plaza in front, where small groups of people were standing around. Mia spotted a handful of BCP uniforms among them, but they weren't looking agitated and there weren't that many of them. Most of the security would be automated, maybe monitored by some people behind screens somewhere else, but even trained, it took a lot of concentration to spot details among the bustle of comings and goings. Especially, as Pearce had pointed out, many strange faces were on the grounds currently, making it harder to notice oddities.

Like, Mia thought wryly, the middle-aged intern making his way like a shark through water and the young woman looking around like a tourist, in a plaid shirt and a backpack hung from one shoulder.

A small sign on the outside of the building said 'Virtual Realty Development Dept.'

The inside had been recently renovated and Mia spotted the small bulbs on the ceiling, where the drones nestled. They functioned as stationary cameras, but were able to detach themselves and investigate anything that triggered their programming. She counted four of them in the lobby and in intervals in the hallways.

Pearce walked past the elevators and pushed through a set of double doors, then strode down another hallway. Fewer people were about and when Pearce finally stopped in front of another elevator, the area seemed empty, though not deserted, people working in offices not far away.

While they waited for the elevator, Pearce looked her over and softened his expression, a little less grim, a little less viciously entertained.

"You're doing fine," he said.

Mia had to grin, "Oh shit, do I look _this_ anxious?"

The elevator arrived and they got in, the doors slid closed silently. The elevator was spacious, but it had a drone sitting right above them, watching them silently.

"You look like someone who's starting to realise what they've signed up for," Pearce said.

A slight pull, travelling from her stomach to her throat as the elevator kicked into motion. She looked back at Pearce, leaning his shoulder into the wall by the display. The artificial light tracked the lines in his face as he moved his head.

"I can't promise you…" he started, stopped to think for a moment, then continued. "… any specific outcome."

"Well, you don't have to," Mia said, trying for levity in her tone and a casual shrug. "You just have to pay me later."

It fell perfectly flat.

"Dave is going down," Pearce said. "I owe him nothing and I couldn't help him anyway. But… if this goes south and we have to beat it out of here, we'll have to split up."

Mia opened her mouth in some kind of denial, not quite sure in that first instant what he was even saying. Then it clicked through, of course. He was offering to draw the heat, the bigger target by far of the two of them, the one more likely to blow their cover. Mia was a nobody, even if her fake ID failed, she was _still_ just a nobody. Some drone would come and tase her, someone would question her and maybe charge her, it'd be uncomfortable and expensive and she'd almost certainly do time. Give or take an over-nervous BCP rookie with a twitchy trigger finger, of course. But she stood a reasonable chance to survive, while Pearce would probably be summarily executed on the spot.

The elevator braked gently and stopped, the doors slid open and the drone hadn't moved.

"You don't have to sacrifice anything for me," Mia said, another half-hearted attempt to make it sound like she was joking.

She caught him nodding to himself, just from the corner of her eyes as she stepped out of the elevator. As he followed her out, he laughed.

"What makes you think that?" he inquired. "You'd just get in my way, that's all."

As these things went, Mia decided, he was a much better actor than she was. Glad he'd thrown her the line, she gave a grin and pushed the conversation to the back of her head, where she kept everything she didn't like to look at about this entire operation.

They had no time for more soul-searching anyway. The easy part was over, dropping them two levels below the surface of Blume HQ, with only five more stories to get down to the development labs and the server farm, where Blume kept their most valuable data.

Mia and Pearce followed the hallway to a lounge are. It was filled with bar tables and sofas, a pool table in the middle and old arcade machines lined up along one wall, vending machines an another.

It was only sparsely populated. A BCP officer and another employee, engrossed in flirting with each other, three other young people leaning over a tablet together, each with a steaming cup in their hands, laughing at whatever they were watching. A woman sat alone on a sofa, VR glasses over her eyes. None of them paid the newcomers any attention.

A length of thick, green bamboo blocked off a direct view from the lounge to the restroom doors.

"Bathroom break," Pearce announced, glanced over the signs by the doors, they were both being marked as unisex.

Public restrooms were one of the few places with limited surveillance due to privacy reasons. Nevertheless, a drone nestled on the roof of the bathroom as well as anywhere else. Mia looked up, flicked a finger over her phone to confirm what she'd counted on: the drone wasn't actively monitoring its surrounding. It would likely only wake if it received a remote command to do so. She couldn't check if Blume had installed something more covet, she wouldn't put it past them, but she hoped restrooms weren't high on the priority list.

They used the restroom to change out of the unnecessary layer of clothing, pried off the adhesive foil and reapplied them to their shoulders. Pearce stuffed the rest into a garbage bin and Mia, after a moment's hesitation, followed. She breathed a little easier without the extra weight, made her a little more confident of the obstacle ahead.

Combined with the jeans they both wore, the near-combat gear might just about pass as ordinary clothing if people couldn't get a long look, or knew what the slight leathery texture of their shirts meant, the bulk of the backpack and the gun holsters.

Pearce checked the rope gun and reloaded the EMP before he put it into a holster at his hip, where it was less likely to get in the way of climbing than the shoulder holster her normally preferred.

Mia wondered briefly what sort of policy Blume had in regards to civilian employees and open carry, but the line of thought was idle, running through her mind as she finished and pulled her backpack around her shoulders again.

Pearce looked her over and for a moment Mia felt like a child whose parent wanted to make sure she wore a weather appropriate coat and had managed not to put the left shoe on her right foot.

In response, she gave back the critical look, it was only fair. Pearce was a little slimmer than she'd remembered him, as if he'd streamlined his muscular bulk for efficiency, sleek in close-fitting black, channeling some cyberpunk fantasy.

He brushed past her blatant appraisal and its thinly veiled envy and remnant slither of infatuation. He pulled out his phone, focussed on it for a moment instead of the Lens as he tapped on it. A moment later, a notification flared up in Mia's eye, informing her that she'd been added in a conference call with Wyland, though it only sad 'D' on the display.

Somewhat reluctantly, she focussed on the present.

"We're almost ready," Pearce said. He unlocked the door and glanced at Mia, who only nodded, pulling her lighter backpack straight over her shoulder.

It took a long moment until Wyland replied, too long for comfort, but he was finally heard to sigh, then clear his throat.

_"Almost?"_ he asked. _"Call again when you're_ actually _ready. We're measuring my access in minutes, not extra hours."_

"I wanted to give you a heads up where we are," Pearce said, a little sharply. "We're heading for the elevator right now."

Again the people in the lounge didn't even look at them and the drones remained dormant above them. She hadn't kept count of the number of drones they'd passed on the way in, but she had a feeling they would both be out of bullets and EMP charges before Blume ran out of drones. She hadn't even seen them in action, yet, but Ray's account of his and Pearce's encounter with them when staking out Tech Meadows had left a deep gash in her peace of mind.

Back at the elevator, they checked both access doors from the hallways and spotted nobody around, but they didn't have much time. The lounge was clearly where the members of this department hung out, any minute, someone could decide to come by.

Pearce hit the elevator button, waited until it arrived.

"Now," he said told Wyland as he stepped in, hit the key for the floor above and stepped back out. The elevator's doors closed and the quiet rumble announced that it was travelling to it's destination.

Wyland hadn't given any confirmation he had control of the surveillance. He'd only spared a low grunt, but Mia assumed it was better than nothing.

She waited until Pearce had withdrawn the crowbar and applied it to the miniature gap between the elevator doors. A normal crowbar would be a far too blunt instrument, but this one didn't look out of place. The front edge consisted of several layers of folded graphene, allowing for a nano-thin edge able to fit into even the smallest gap.

Mia shot an EMP projectile where the door's lock mechanism was and a small, barely audible click announced that it had given way. Pearce leaned into the crowbar, pried open the doors until he could slide more of the steel tool in and lever it open. Even with the lock disengaged, he had to work against the low magnetism of the doors and the weight of the doors themselves.

With only a small sense of unease, Mia pushed her fingers into the gap and pulled the other way. Finally, the door hit a critical point and slid open completely.

The elevator shaft gaped by their feet and Mia swallowed dryly before she remembered heights didn't bother her, though to be honest, this kind of black hole wasn't the kind she usually had in mind. Her experience consisted more of buildings and bridges, staked towers of shipping containers or cars, all of them objects which had a multitude of handholds to navigate them. The elevator shaft, in comparison, was nearly perfectly smooth on the inside, save for the guide rails in the corners.

"Ah shit," Pearce muttered.

While she'd been looking down, Pearce had looked up at the elevator that hung on the floor above, where Wyland was hopefully keeping it until they had attached.

Riding down _in_ the elevator wasn't going to work, it'd simply reject them based on their IDs. Riding on _top_ of it wouldn't work because they had no way to access the door on the lowest floor. In addition, no one knew if vibration from above wouldn't activate the drone inside the elevator. So they could only get down _below_ the elevator _._

The undercarriage of the elevator was unexpectedly compact, it wasn't covered, but as Mia studied it, she understood what had prompted Pearce's remark. They couldn't shoot the rope up there, there wasn't anything obvious to attach it to.

_"Hurry the fuck up,"_ Wyland sneered. _"I sent an out of order notice to two employees already. These things count towards the overall number of unscheduled outages, you know. I can't hold the thing up there forever."_

"Wait," Pearce demanded. Wyland grumbled, but had enough sense not to waste time on arguing.

Pearce's gaze tracked over the bottom of the elevator cabin again.

"There," he said then, pointed with the crowbar.

"Where?" Mia squinted in the semi-twilight, followed the line of started by the crowbar. Pearce dropped the tool when he thought she had spotted what he meant and leant back out of the elevator.

"You'll need to take my pack for a moment," he then said.

"I don't see…" Mia started and frowned a little harder when she saw Pearce heft the rope gun.

"The brake," Pearce said. "I can hold on to it and attach the rope by hand."

Slightly disbelieving, Mia looked back at the corner of the elevator. The cabin rested on brakes in all corners, a metal hook adding stability. Pearce shot the rope before Mia had any chance to argue the risks, even before she knew if she _wanted_ to argue the risks.

They should've brought proper climbing harnesses, Mia thought, but there'd been a limit to how many tools they could stuff into their packs without arousing suspicion and Pearce had deemed harnesses unnecessary.

Pearce simply wrapped the rope around his hand and leapt. He caught the rope with his other hand and Mia supposed he might have been able to jump to the handhold directly if he had really needed to. He hauled himself up, tangled his feet in the rope so he could semi-stand on the rope with one foot, taking some of the pressure off his arms to work.

Mia pulled loose the tip of the rope and tossed him the second gun, he snatched it from the air, waited a moment until he'd stopped swaying, than pulled himself up further, found something to attach the rope to somewhere in the depth of the cabin's undercarriage.

He swung to the other rope, detached the rope from the brake handle on another spot in the undercarriage.

"Toss me my backpack," he said.

Mia did and Pearce swung it back around, seemingly unconcerned about his swaying or the certain death below his feet. He swung the second rope towards Mia, so she could grasp it.

She knew she shouldn't hold her breath, but it was practically the only way she could launch herself off the edge of solid ground. Gravity pulled at her, a sudden sharp lurch and strain in her arm muscles as they had to take her full weight.

After the first moment, when the adrenaline spike started to wane and she could think clearly, she regained some height and hung by Pearce's side.

"We're good," Pearce told Wyland.

_"Finally,"_ Wyland huffed.

The doors to the second floor closed, trapping them in darkness. The echo in the elongated, but narrow space was odd, making Mia hear her own breathing like a metallic kind of thunder in her ears. After another moment, the elevator slid into motion.

"You realise we're being crushed if this thing goes all the way down, right?" Mia asked. She wasn't sure if she was still trying to joke about it, in the pitch-black darkness she didn't seem to need the extra disguise.

_"You won't,"_ Wyland said, reminding her she wasn't alone with Pearce and that Wyland and his attitude were privy to her introspective moment irked her.

Pearce chuckled. Perhaps the thought of being crushed on the super-secure mainframe level of Blume HQ amused him. Indeed, there was a dark kind of humour in it, Mia imaged how their rotting bodies would fill the place with an unbearable stench until someone finally found out what had happened.

_"Problem,"_ Wyland announced and a moment later, the elevator stopped.

Mia peered down in the darkness, trying to gauge how far down they'd already come.

_"You can't unlock the door, you'll have to get off on the sixth floor,"_ Wyland explained. _"There's a stairwell access to the server floor from there."_

"I don't know the layout," Pearce pointed out.

_"Humph."_

Pearce's phone buzzed when it received a message.

_"I sent you floor-plans,"_ Wyland said. _"They are_ not _correct, the actual plans are kept under locks, but it should give you an idea."_

He sniggered, _"You can't miss the servers anyway."_

"What do you mean?" Mia asked.

_"You'll see,"_ Wyland said, still sniggering. _"But don't get any ideas, the floor's solid."_

"The floor? What the hell?"

"Wyland…" Pearce warned, wintery low in impatience.

Wyland only snorted in derision, far from intimidated and he didn't elaborate. He said, _"I believe that's your floor. Get moving, I have no plans to die of old age here."_

He paused for a moment, then, very quietly, he added, " _… even if that was an option."_

* * *

The floor on the sixth sub-level of Blume was glass. Endless rows of servers below it, running into the distance underneath semi-transparent walls, sectioning off labs and offices. Some of the walls were glass, too, broad enough to house fish tanks or full-blown walk-in rock gardens. Everything was lit by daylight lamps and even the air smelled fresh and clean. 

"Damn," Mia exclaimed. "I should've applied here."

Pearce shot an EMP projectile at the drone in the ceiling, buying them the time they needed to exit the elevator shaft, a few more precious seconds to catch their bearing and let some blood reinvigorate their hands and arms.

Pearce had written an app that calculated visibility angles for the drones. The app used up a ridiculous amount of computing power and required the user focus on the drone for some time while holding without moving too much. Because of this, only Mia's was switched on, forcing her to stay put against her every instinct while she stared at the drone as if she hoped it'd blink first.

The overlay lit up the room and she dashed for the corner without giving Pearce any advance warning, but he was focussed on her, picked up her cues with ease and slipped into motion easily, getting them both to a narrow blind spot before the drone rebooted.

It seemed like not a lot of people got to work in the luxury department. For the first part of the trip, all the open-space cubicles and lounge corners were empty and they made progress without many starts and stops. They had to use the EMP gun only on a handful of drones, keeping their overall error count to a minimum.

They heard the music playing well before they got close, knock-off turn-of-the-millenium rap revival, by Mia's sour-faced estimate.

She manoeuvred them into an alcove between potted ginkgo trees and a high rack of prayer rugs. Crammed in close with Pearce, just out of sight of the drone, Mia pulled another face.

"Now?" she asked.

"Get your mask up," Pearce said, pulled what looked like cloth over her face, though its edge slipped closed to his skin and provided a passable air filter for several minutes. They had to jostle back and forth until he could fish the can from the backpack and she had her mask in place.

"Roll it where the drone won't see," he said as he shoved the can in her hand. It was already activated, hissing quietly as it released the invisible knock-out gas. She wasn't too confident, the drone had pretty good view of where the people were, but she aimed and slithered down, gave the can a shove and let it roll gently over the floor. It came to lie under a coffee table by two beanbags.

She shuffled back up, caught Pearce's gaze and he nodded, already the conversation ahead of them began to dim, making the music seem louder. 

_"Where are you?"_ Wyland asked. He'd been quiet for so long, Mia had almost forgotten he was there.

"A post-it note said 'Here be tentacles'," Mia said sardonically.

She felt Pearce's hand move near her thigh as he tapped on his phone and added, "That's designated area 6-15b on the blueprints you sent."

_"I'd hoped you'd move faster,"_ Wyland said. His ever present sneer and jaded drawl had vanished, replaced by a more disconcertingly neutral calm.

"Why don't you come down and show us how it's done?" Mia asked.

"How close are they?" Pearce asked, ignoring her. He sounded serious.

_"Security figured they're being hacked. I can lead them on for a while, but they'll soon figure out it's an inside job."_

"How far did my virus spread?"

_"It wasn't detected, but it's not… well, it's not very infectious, either."_

Pearce leaned his face past her shoulder to peer around the corner. Mia pushed her shoulder into him to stop him from leaning too far. The music was the only sound they heard by then, indicating the people had been put to sleep.

_"It's only infected 11.7% of the drones,"_ Wyland said and his attitude slowly returned. _"But for eyeballing their firewalls, it's better than I thought. I couldn't have done_ much _better."_

"You couldn't do it all," Pearce observed. "Shut it for a sec."

Pearce raised the EMP gun, slid to the very edge of the alcove and stepped out around the corner. In only a split second, he took aim and fired. Unlike the other times, however, he fired two shots.

He stepped out in the open and Mia followed.

Sparks flew from the socket in the ceiling, then the drone dropped to the ground and landed with a low metallic thud.

"I was wondering what'd happen," Pearce remarked. Mia saw he'd fired the second projectile at the socket, not the drone. It must have disengaged the mechanism keeping the drone in place.

"Was that a good idea?" she asked. If the drone started to move, there was no way the app could keep up with calculating the angles correctly.

"Don't worry," Pearce said and quickly stepped over the drone, turned it around and slid open a small panel. As Mia stepped in close, she spotted the small touchscreen display. Pearce pulled out a switchblade and let it snap open, used it to pry the screen away, then dug with the knife into the innards of the drone behind it and pulled out the battery.

"Dave?" Mia asked. "Did that raise an alarm?"

_"There was a spike in the drone's network,"_ Wyland said. _"They're… confused."_

"Good enough," Pearce said and stepped around the drone and towards a workstation. A man and a woman had collapsed near it. They'd both have some bad cramps judging from their position in addition to the headache and other hangover-like symptoms the gas would leave them with.

Transparent screens hung on thin suspensions in front of the desk, the central one displayed several open windows with programme code, something that looked like diagnostics and, just behind so only the edge was visible, some big-breasted anime girl.

"Hot damn," Mia whistled, stepped in close as Pearce. A second screen showed the same anime image. "Is that porn?"

Pearce pulled a chair close and sat down, scrolling through the data that had been opened on the screen, long lines of code.

"We both know the correct term is hentai, Mia," Pearce said without looking at her, focussed on the code rather than the image or Mia.

Despite herself, Mia laughed, "Now the tentacle thing makes sense…"

_"What the fuck are you even_ doing _?"_ Wyland demanded. 

"It's a converter," Pearce said. "It converts 2D to 3D and to VR." He nodded appreciatively. "That's one hell of a market."

"Virtual porn?"

"Can you think of anything bigger?"

_"Whatever you do, you need to stop right now,"_ Wyland said, sounding exasperated. _"And keep moving."_

Pearce ignored him. He'd disabled the drone to get his fingers on a Blume workstation and he didn't mind if it was porn or something else. The way he'd fixated on the code the moment it had become possible gave it away.

Mia drifted away from him, found another workstation, clearly working on the same project, though by the looks of it, the person was testing the converter out on other input video, with apparently much less desirable results. It seemed the abstraction of cartoons made it easier.

Pearce found his way through the workstation's OS without any difficulty. Superficially, it wasn't much different than Blume's old desktop OS, but once he tried to access the source code through some of the old exploits, nothing worked.

He fished a drive from his pocket and dropped it near the computer, then pulled out his phone and tabbed through several settings.

"You're taking it?" Mia asked, eyebrows wandering up, glancing at him through the glass.

"I'm…" he said and trailed off in concentration as the system refused to transfer. Ideally, he'd simply take a complete copy of the hard-drive, but it demanded credentials he couldn't provide. If he had time, he could probably crack it, but time was the only thing he didn't have.

It did, however, let him make a copy of the converter.

"I'm taking the converter," he finally answered.

_"Look,"_ Wyland said. _"Am I dying for your dirty habits right now?"_

"You don't have to die," Pearce said. "You could've ran. You probably still can."

_"Yeah, well,"_ Wyland said noncommittally. _"If you don't get moving right now, I will."_

"He's got a point, Pearce," Mia said, sidled back to Pearce's side. Glancing around, the people gave no sign they'd be waking up soon, though the ventilation must have dispersed of the gas by then.

Pearce didn't react for another minute, but before Mia could bring herself to start an argument, he snatched the drive up and pocketed it as he got up.

_"Hey,"_ Wyland said roughly. _"Miles to go and promises to keep, in case you've forgotten."_

"What promises?" Pearce inquired, but mildly.

They did keep moving, though, as Pearce and Wyland spoke, Mia and Pearce working the same rhythm into which they'd fallen since arriving on the floor.

_"Why do you think I'm helping you?"_ Wyland asked. _"So you can jack it to virtual cartoons?"_

"It'd make for a good story."

_"A sad joke, maybe."_

"You're helping me because I asked," Pearce finally answered. "It's simple."

_"No,"_ Wyland said. _"I don't even like you."_

"Doesn't matter."

Not unlike their hike through the forest, time turned into an oddly insubstantial, but still steadily depleting commodity. Wyland said nothing more and it was hard to guess how much time they really had. Mia looked at her clock only twice and realised it had been barely an hour since they'd climbed the wall, even if it felt like a lifetime ago.

They worked their way through the complex systematically. Pearce disabled the drone with the EMP gun then Mia stepped out to allow the app to scan and predict the angle. She took the lead moving through the area and Pearce shadowed her every seemingly non-sensical zig-zag.

They came across very few people and avoided them where they could. They had to use the knockout gas only twice more and once Pearce simply punched a young woman in the face as she unexpectedly turned a corner and stumbled into them. They left her unconscious in a blind spot. Mia supposed they'd be the first to know when she was found.

The longer they went, the fewer people there were until they left the open-spaced workstations behind and solid walls blocked off large parts of the area, narrowed down to long, straight corridors as a firm reminder just how deep underground they were. Only the floor remained transparent, teasing them with what they still couldn't get to. Small plagues announced they were going through some sort of industrial clean-room area, Blume's hardware development lab.

Blume wasn't a notable player in the consumer end of the market, but they were slowly pushing towards providing out-of-the-box for everyone, not just governments and businesses able to pay for their large-scale security and surveillance installation.

The corridor ended on a set of pale white double doors, though the only reason it didn't look like a dead-end wall was because the door was outlined with stripes of black metal and a transparent monitor was affixed to the wall on one side. A light projection hovered across the door, visible only when viewed through a digital Lens' specific ways to process visual input.

[Server Access]

Unexpectedly, Wyland spoke up, _"You're right. It's simple."_

Mia heard something in his tone that hadn't been there before. He sounded rough, burned out in ways she was only just beginning to grasp and only because she'd spent so much time with Pearce, Ray and Tobias. They were all running a fever, it exhausted them even while it filled them with sick energy.

He was also breathing a little harder, as if he'd been running or at least walking too fast or too far. If he had been forced out of his office and was on the move…

_"And it doesn't matter."_

Pearce either didn't notice or didn't care. He pulled out the crowbar and carefully tested it against the smooth surface of the door. Even with the graphene edge, he had problems finding the gap for the crowbar to hook into.

"Mia?" he prompted when she hadn't moved.

"I don't…" she started. "Pearce, there's something wrong."

"I know," he said, his voice grating over her nerves, commanding tone vibrating in the air. "Shoot the lock."

In her ear, she heard something crash from Wyland's end, furniture shattering, the thin sound of breaking glass and the cackle of electricity let loose. Mia thought it should be louder, more voices, more gunshots, but the connection just cut out without any decorum.

"Mia!"

She shook into motion, unable to not follow the order, pulled out the EMP gun and aimed at the monitor, but then hesitated, not sure where the locking mechanism actually was, everything looked too homogenous.

A low, metallic sound dragged her attention and she wasted time by turning her head around and watch as the drones drop from their immobile sockets on the ceiling.

"Shoot the door," Pearce ordered and Mia stopped thinking just did as she was told. The projectile hit the door, the small EMP blast radius hopefully just big enough to encompass the entire width of the door and the monitor.

The [Server Access] sign went out and Pearce threw his weight into the crowbar to force it into the tiny gap, but he couldn't get it in far enough for proper leverage. He tried again, snarling as he made no noticeable headway.

The drones shot their first taser at them, impacting Pearce's protected back and Mia's arm. She stepped away from him and back into the corridor, getting out of Pearce's way and shielding him from the drones.

The EMP gun took them out easily, sometimes even two at a time when they were close enough together and they didn't seem able to reboot quickly.

"It's all of them, right?" Mia inquired, a little breathless not from exertion but from tension. "The entire fucking floor."

Pearce answered with a curse and she heard him beat his fist into the door in frustration before he leaned in behind the crowbar again.

The drones paused firing, just hung in the hallway almost motionless and Mia used the moment to look back at Pearce. He'd finally managed to get the crowbar into the gap, lever the doors open by an inch and pushed the crowbar further, finally able to apply some proper pressure.

"They stopped," Pearce remarked, though without looking away from what he's was doing. He set his foot into the opening, hacked the crowbar into it further up and finally pushed his whole body in, forcing the door open. Unlike the elevator doors, this one didn't eventually snap open on its own.

"I don't…" Mia began to say, before she realised that she actually _knew_ why the drones had stopped firing at them, or indeed seemed to be doing nothing at all. They were processing the new information. They had already had an encounter with Pearce and T-Bone out in the Pawnee, where tasering them had also failed due to the material of the bullet proof vest. Now several of their projectiles had also failed and they _were_ a self-improving system.

"Fuck."

Behind the door, there was a stairwell and beyond that, another double door, this one mode of glass, revealing an endlessly long corridor between servers. As Pearce straightened away from his struggle with the door, the drones shook into motion again, changed their alignment amongst themselves for some reason. Instinctively, Mia let herself drop to her knees and the taser hissed past where her head had been.

At the same time Pearce dipped down into the stairwell to avoid them. For a second, she met his gaze, saw something burning there that would frighten her, if she had the time and mental capacity.

"Cover me," he demanded. He tossed her his EMP gun before he turned away from her, drawing his semi-automatic revolver instead.

With an EMP gun in each hand, Mia turned her back on Pearce and the server, focussed on taking down as many drones as she could. It was almost hypnotic in a way, the repetition, the way she didn't have a lot of space to move or dodge. The drones were still struggling with adapting their methods, their aim was off, the heads of their targets much harder to hit than their torso.

Behind her, she heard Pearce's first shot impact the door, followed by the hiss as the bullet ricochetted and veered off into the corridor, punching into a drone, making it dropped down trailing a thin line of smoke.

Mia caught a glimpse of Pearce as he fired several more shots at the same spot of the door, hoping to wear through the reinforced material. He fired again, then flinched back with a surprised yelp. He swayed out of her line of sight, but steadied himself, a small wet patch of glistening blood on his jaw, just above the collar.

The drones blocked her view and Mia realised they were too close and too many. She tried to roll away, but had nowhere to go and no time to do it fast enough anyway. In slow-motion, she saw the drone right above her head, saw the tiny spikes of the projectile and felt it tear through the skin of her forehead before she could bring up her arm.

She felt her body go stiff as her muscles pulled to breaking point. It hurt like being turned to solid stone, it washed over her and took away her body, made it not her's anymore. Her eyes were locked open so wide, her vision began to swim and fade. Then it stopped and her body went so limp, she wouldn't have been surprised if she'd decomposed into a puddle right there on the floor.

She saw Pearce's blurred outline step over her and a moment later she heard a metallic clanking sound, then another. She couldn't place what it was, she couldn't see and she still needed to find the courage to try and move her arm.

"Mia!" Pearce shouted, he didn't sound particularly compassionate, most of his voice conveyed impatience and annoyance, though whether with her for being downed or with the overall situation, Mia didn't know. She blinked again, shifted her arms and groaned at the soreness in her entire body.

There were several shots, then Pearce bulk was over her again, picking her up by her arms and hauling her to her feet, leaning her into the wall.

"I can't see," she mumbled. 

"Your Lenses," he snapped. "They're broken."

She brought her hands up and swiped through her eyes, retrieving the Lens, then blinked a few times. This time, her surrounding finally became clear again.

The hallway was littered with drones, somehow, Pearce had managed to take down the remaining ones, though they could only have a few moments of respite.

"Did you bash them with the crowbar?" Mia asked, faint awe creeping into her tone. "Oh man, I wish I'd seen it."

She chuckled in tired amusement as she let her head drop back. "Do it again."

There was no answering humour in Pearce's gaze, digging into Mia's and forcing her to sober up, dredge up what composure she could.

"Are we in?" Mia finally asked.

She looked past Pearce and down the stairwell. Pearce's shots had left a black patch on the doors, but he hadn't been able to get through.

He shook his head, face grim right in front of her, jaw clenched tight with blood still seeping into his collar and smeared across his cheek.

"What do we do?" she asked, but already saw in his eyes that he had no answer.

The server they had come for was right there, behind that door, perhaps they could even _see_ it already, close enough. Access to Blume's dirtiest secrets, their source codes, everything they'd come to find.

Pearce's gaze burned into hers. He was still holding her up with a hand by her shoulder, she wasn't sure she needed it, but he hadn't taken it back. It was a point of connection, making her feel his intensity, travelling through his arm and into her shoulder, almost more invasive than the taser had been.

From the corners of her eyes, she spotted movement down the hall. More drones, she guessed.

"Pearce," she said and nothing more.

His gaze left her face, seared a burning trail down her body, sizing up her physical and mental state, before he snapped his attention back to her face in silence. He was calculating, she could tell. Perhaps the taser had given her superpowers and she could read his thoughts. The time it would take to break through the second door with the EMP and the crowbar, the time they needed to find the right server. He hadn't been able to copy the contents from the hentai workstation, he'd need time to crack the server and then transfer the data, which even with the lightning fast nano drives would take several minutes.

He was calculating if she could hold off Blume's security for that long, if she was in any state to make a difference if he threw her to the hounds, all the while keeping her pinned to the wall. If the answer to all that was _yes,_ he wouldn't let her go.

His mouth formed a tight line in his face, the muscles playing along his jaw and eyes narrowed to predatory slit. He took a strained breath, snatched his arm from her shoulder and turned away from the server room doors.

"We have to leave," he said in low rasp, so harsh it must leave his throat bleeding from the abrasion. "Now."

She wouldn't argue, they could deal with the crushing sense of defeat later, when there was still something left of them both. She picked up both EMP guns, checked how much charge they both still had and liked the result somewhat better than she'd thought.

Her body still felt alien, but it followed her orders well enough, or perhaps it was following Pearce's orders, which made slightly more sense to her still addled mind. She didn't want to know how well she'd do in a fight, but she had a feeling she'd find it out soon enough.

There were only a handful of drones and they made no move to attack them. Instead, they hovered up and slotted themselves back into their sockets on the ceiling.

Mia exchanged a questioning look with Pearce and he opened his mouth to answer, but then the lights went out. Canned, dark ride laughter filled the hallway and then the monitors came back on. It showed the picture of gravestone, the pixelated skull on it jerked its jaw wide open as if it was laughing, a red glow flashing rhythmically in its pitch-black eye-sockets.

A comic book font splashed across it in clashing colours.

DEDSEC IS BACK! TIME TO RUN!

The canned laughter merged into a horror movie scream, then the laughter came back, overlaying it.

Pearce's hand closed around her arm again, pulling her into motion, making her run, just like the message said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reference:** "But man is not made for defeat" from The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (who I have no business quoting while I'm so pointlessly wordy all the time…)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Author's Note:** So, now that you've read it, is the pacing really off? Is it too slow? Or does it just feel that way to me? I know I keep getting lost in too much blow-by-blow, it's damn irritating… but let me tell you that describing all this stuff is really relaxing.


	8. Gunmetal Sky – Part 2

 

Mia stumbled in the dark and Pearce shot his arm out to steady her before he realised he'd been doing it. She made a hissing noise at the back of her throat, as annoyed by her body's lack of cooperation as he was.

Without Lenses, she would have to rely on her phone's screen for everything with all the time consumption and distraction it entailed, but Pearce decided to cross that bridge when they got to it. He pushed her back into the wall, waited for a heartbeat longer until she had the strength to be pulled along by him.

He did, however, envy Mia's lack of Lenses on another front. Whatever Dave had done, he had dug deep into Blume, most likely some of their less essential and thus less well protected systems. Like the projection on the server access door, DedSec's tired old hipster iconography was splashed hovering against the walls and the ceiling, shifting with his movements to make the mocking skulls always seem like they were looking right at him.

As he hurried along the hallway, Pearce used the respite to put the pieces together, though in truth there wasn't much unexpected. He'd always known getting this deep into Blume would take more time and more luck then they had. His virus and Dave's access had always only been enough to give them a chance to _get out_ again. He'd spare the breath for a laugh, but he didn't like the taste of it.

He shouldn't have let T-Bone talk him into it in the first place. T-Bone wanted Blume, so he could damn well go and get it himself. Which, of course, had come off the table quite quickly once T-Bone had grit his teeth and admitted he wasn't up to the physical side of it. At least they were both spared hurling accusations at each other now that shit had hit the fan, as Pearce was fairly sure he'd pointed out it would.

As expected, Blume had sealed the doors to the labs tight. He wouldn't have tried going through them even so, there was no second exit on the layout he had so even if it existed, he had no time to search for it. Sealing the doors was likely a precaution, protecting precious research and equipment in the labs as well as keeping unarmed personnel out of the line of fire. It also left just one way open for them to flee and BCP had had enough time to prepare themselves.

His swiped his attention over Mia and then sped up, getting ahead of her and falling into an all out sprint, so when he reached the double doors to the open-plan office beyond, he was hitting it at full speed, burst through the door with his gun already drawn and the baton ready to spring free to deliver the first blow.

Without recourse to most of his apps, he had to tag his enemies the old fashioned way, figure out their positions and memorise them. From a leaked version of BCP's training manual, he knew they operated in units of three for efficiency in crammed spaces like offices and based on the number of shots already fired at them, he guessed at least two units were already in cover ahead of them. His armour could take most of the heat and the shifting, flickering light and the shrieking of DedSec's last stand would hinder his enemies more than him.

He could take on six people.

In the flickering light, he had only a split second to map the room, spot the BCP officers hunkered down on the other end of the room, their bulk barely more than a shadow. A unit of three on the right was much closer to him, circling a large, round conference table to flank him while the group by the door caught his attention.

"FREEZE! THIS IS BCP!" someone called, apparently ordered not to shoot on sight. If nothing else, it proved Blume hadn't identified him, yet.

"STOP AND…!"

Pearce dove to the side, ran past a row of desks and the glass walls separating them in the time it took for the unit by the table to realise he was coming for them. They twisted around, but the one nearest Pearce had no chance to even try to deflect the blow.

Using the edge of the wall as a slippery handhold, Pearce threw himself around the corner sharply, landed his boot firmly in the first man's face. He grunted and toppled back, as Pearce stepped past him, dropped low and smashed the extended baton into the next man's shin, where the armour was thinnest to allow freer movement. He snapped the baton up, caught the man below the chin, then snapped the baton to the side and smack the gun the man was trying to raise out of his hand.

By then, the first man had struggled back around, yelled a curse, inflection wet and enraged from his smashed in nose. Pearce whirled around, knocked the gun aside with the baton, pulled his own gun up and shot him in the face, the burst of his automatic pistol perforating his features and dropping him motionless on the ground. Immediately, he whipped the gun around and fired a burst for the second man. He was higher than the first and took the bullet to the throat and jaw, but it killed him just the same.

The third member of the unit, a little further away with a potted plant preventing Pearce to lung for her in a direct line, used the chance to draw back, yell a last warning, though from the direction of her head, Pearce could tell she was more than a little disturbed by her companions' fate.

She fired, high rasp of her SMG, but Pearce stepped aside swiftly, dipped behind the same plant she was using as cover and held it between them as she whipped around to follow him. She took a step forward, past the plant to find a better angle to shoot, but Pearce was faster. He shot her right knee, but she tried to aim at him even as she buckled, a second shot ripped the SMG from her hand.

Pearce launched himself at her, knocked the baton flat against her throat and yanked back as he stepped past her, crushing her throat. Her arms flailed aimlessly, making pathetic gargling sounds as he dropped her.

It had taken only a few moments, barely enough for the second unit to rearrange their tactic, but they were too far for him to reach them quickly, so Pearce drew back into the shadows of a desk and ran the length of it, hoping the BCP officers would lose sight of him, if only for a moment.

In the meantime, Mia had sneaked in under the radar while he'd been drawing everyone's fire. Stealing a quick glance around the room, he caught sight of her briefly as she made her way along the outer edge. Whatever noise she'd make, the canned laughter from Dave's DedSec hack would drown it out as long as she was careful.

They couldn't afford to be hemmed in, they needed to keep moving. If they made it to the elevator at all, then he'd reconsider their chances, not before.

BCP had given up all attempts at a peaceful solution, they shouted no more warnings, the moment Pearce became visible past a glass wall, they opened fire. Their bullets tore through the wall and sent a million glittering shards raining over him as he dove out of the spray. The suit he wore would deflect the worst, but he'd still feel the impact of that many bullets and the material would wear thin eventually.

He rolled back to his feet and returned fire, aiming for faces and throats, at the gloved hands that held the SMGs. He shot one man trying to make a run for him, brought his gun around and felled his companion before she could dive into cover. She rolled back to her feet behind a coffee-table, ready to shoot, but Pearce had only waited for her to stop moving so he didn't waste any bullets.

Almost simultaneously he heard the bang of Mia's gun and he shifted out of cover to see the third member of the BCP unit stumble as he took a bullet to the back of the head.

Pearce regained his feet instantly and hurried to rejoin Mia.

She still looked a little shaken, but she managed to fake a quick smile and waste a moment's look at the bodies strewn around the room, something he didn't do and instead pushed through the door into the next hallway.

Blume must have evacuated the labs and offices, they encountered no one but BCP personnel, even the rooms they'd had to clear with knockout gas were empty as they retraced their steps back to the elevator.

Whatever prank Wyland had played on Blume, it seemed to prove surprisingly hard for their engineers to turn off. As they ran and fought through the lowest level of Tech Meadows, the laughing skull accompanied them, its presence a reassurance that Blume had no control over their own facilities anymore. If this was true, then Blume couldn't see them through the remaining stationary cameras and most of the drones were damaged or downed back at the server access door. The remaining drones made no move against them, Pearce's virus couldn't affect them like this, but perhaps Wyland had done something else to them. Lack of hacking talent had never been DedSec's problem, after all.

Their goal now was clear, make the elevator before Blume regained control of their security network. They couldn't afford to get bogged down in a drawn-out fight, but BCP was slow to get units lined up against them in sufficient numbers. The maze-like layout of the floor seemed to help, funnel their enemies to them in bite-sized numbers, easily and quickly taken down.

They ran into a break lounge, furnished very much like the one they had come through on the way down. They'd been forced to take a different route than coming in and the uncertainty of the floor-plans kept pulling at Pearce's from the back of his mind. Any turn they took could lead them into an unexpected dead-end, force them to backtrack and buy their enemies more time to organise.

The lounge had several doors leading off to other open-plan offices and game rooms. BCP had already taken position here, pushing in through all the doors in greater numbers, but when Pearce dove behind cover, he caught a glimpse through one of the doors and the hallway beyond, spotting an elevator door, firmly closed by Dave's hacks and Pearce's virus.

He curled back to his feet, stole a quick look around the room to count down the BCP officers swarming into the room. They opened fire the moment they saw him, other shots went off further to the side, to where Mia had dropped into cover.

Bullets ripped the furniture apart easily, just plastics and acrylic glass, brushed steel finish and high-end transparent computer screens offered no real protection except for giving Pearce a chance to navigate on his own terms. He leapt onto a table, felt a bullet impact his arm, but the suit he wore meant he'd suffered nothing but a slight bruise. He ran the length of the table, watched his enemies from the corner of his eyes and careened to the side at the last, unexpected moment, just when they thought they knew where he'd been going.

He smacked the baton into a man's face, twisted around and stepped into a woman's knee and brought the baton around to break her nose. The third member of their unit brought her gun up, despite the close quarters, trying to bring it level to his unprotected head, but he jumped her and tackled her to the ground, hand closed around her wrist. He heard her gun make a quiet error sound as she lost her grip on it, warning him not to try and use it. She began rolling away from him, scrambling for her gun, but Pearce got up faster, kicked it away and stepped on her hand, twisted the baton and stabbed the tip down where her neck met her head.

She made a low, wheezing sound as she went limp under him.

Pearce sensed rather than saw someone step in close behind him, dropped himself to the side before another BCP officer could tackle him. The baton had retracted a few inches with the blow, but from this position, kicking his heel into the man's chest was faster and drove the air from his lungs.

"Pearce!" Mia yelled from across the room. "Mask!"

Standing up, he brought the baton back to its full length with a flick of his wrist and pulled his mask over his nose and mouth, then twisted around to launch himself at his next attacker.

The knockout gas was a good idea. It wasn't meant for combat situations, it wasn't strong enough to take people under who knew what was happening and were pumped up on adrenaline, but it would give them a small edge, by slowing their enemies' reflexes down.

Mia dispatched several of the canisters into adjoining rooms and especially into the hall outside the elevator. She ran after the last one immediately, was gone from his sight while he downed his current opponent and stepped over him as he lay there whimpering. He'd cleared his immediate surrounding, but there were still more personnel pushing into the room through the invisible knockout gas.

Pearce pulled his gun, aimed and waited for half a heartbeat until he fired, making sure he dropped three people in the doorway, hindering the ones behind them by having to lug them out of the way or even applying first aid.

Without waiting, he fell into a short run, reached the door to the hallway where he spotted Mia working at the elevator with her phone. Just as he watched, the doors slid open and she looked up to catch his gaze.

The room dropped into darkness and silence so hard it felt like a physical blow. It must have hit the BCP people without warning, too, because they didn't use the chance to bullrush them, or perhaps the gas had made them too sluggish to do it.

Mia cursed quietly to herself, realising at the same time as him what it meant. Blume's engineers had finally regained control of their system, shutting it down, resetting it and would be booting it back up any second. The lights flickered back on, pristine and white after the garish DedSec decor, but then the darkness snapped back and filled itself with the same canned laughter.

"I got it!" Mia shouted.

In the tiny moment of brightness, Pearce had spotted someone moving towards him from the room behind him, now he lunged forward blindly and collided with a man's solid frame, who immediately pulled up to defend himself. In the dark, Pearce got a hold of his neck and kept his own feet clear of a swipe, used the moment of slight imbalance against his opponent and swung him around. He'd been aiming for the wall, but he missed it and hit only the doorway, nearly knocking the man from his grip.

"Pearce!" Mia shouted again.

He grunted an annoyed affirmative and dragged the dazed BCP officer with him. Mia had switched on the flashlight of her phone, a tiny beacon from inside the elevator. Pearce threw the man inside ahead of him and stepped through as Mia closed the door and the elevator slipped into motion smoothly.

The light and the laughter came on again as the elevator shuddered and stalled. There was another second of darkness. The laughter died and the light came back.

The elevator didn't move and Pearce watched as Mia dropped her hands from her phone and looked at him wide-eyed.

"I lost it," she said unnecessarily.

Pearce dragged his gaze over the ceiling of the elevator, but there was no drone, so at least they didn't have to worry about that.

"Sitting ducks," Mia observed. "Great. Now all they've got to do is drive us where they want us."

"Hm," Pearce muttered noncommittally. He pushed past her to the BCP officer and hauled his slumped form back up, pushed him into a corner to help keep him upright, gave him a none-too-gentle slap that knocked his face aside.

The side of his face that had collided with the doorway was slowly swelling, blotched red spots, but he blinked into the present slowly. He froze when he finally took stock of his surrounding and realised where he was and who was glowering down on him.

The name tag on the BCP officer's uniform was made from the same material as the adhesive foil Wyland had put on their shoulders earlier. Unlike the foil, though, this one spelt out his name as _C. Fletcher._

Before Fletcher had enough sense to begin mounting a defence, Pearce aligned the baton with his lower arm and pressed it against Fletcher's throat hard enough to make him choke and only eased up again slightly. Fletcher had his hands half-raised, stopped in mid-movement, neither quite an attack nor quite a surrender.

Fletcher's gaze flittered past Pearce's shoulder to fix on Mia, but snapped back around when he felt Pearce pull his shirt from his trousers, then unzip the shirt and reach underneath.

Confusion washed over Fletcher's face, immediately replaced by growing horror when Pearce pulled up the thin material of the bulletproof shirt he wore. Unlike the suits Pearce and Mia had fabricated for themselves, BCP had access to material as fine as cotton. While it was far more comfortable to wear, it was also much easier to dislodge. Pearce withdrew his hand, pushed harder with the baton when Fletcher began to fidget in an attempt to slide away to the side.

Without taking his gaze off Fletcher's, Pearce drew his gun and pressed the barrel into the now unprotected flesh of Fletcher's stomach.

Despite his dark skin, Fletcher blanched even more than his already unhealthy pallor from the knockout gas and the encounter with the doorway. He sucked in his breath and held it, too tense to even breath.

"Unlock the elevator," Pearce demanded in a low growl.

Fletcher's breathing returned, albeit shallowly, trying not to push into the barrel as if he was afraid that would set it off.

"No," Fletcher forced through clenched teeth. He could barely look at Pearce, could barely breath, but his voice barely wavered, either. He knew he had to hold out only for a short time until BCP took full control of the elevator.

Pearce felt Mia's attention dig into the back of his head, or perhaps she was staring at his hand and the gun. He ignored her, he had no time to talk her through it. Without Wyland, they were trapped and none of them could kill their way out of it.

"Come on," Pearce huffed, sounding more bored than annoyed. "We both know how this'll go."

Clenching his teeth, Fletcher shook his head, body pulled so tense he was vibrating. He looked past Pearce's shoulder, fixed on Mia for a long moment, looking for support and Pearce felt Mia's uncertainty behind him.

Pearce gave Fletcher a warning, a small jab of the gun, increased pressure on his throat, but ultimately, Pearce wasn't in the mood to waste time on more. Never taking his gaze off Fletcher's, he pulled the trigger. The bang was muffled through the clothes and he was close enough to catch the smell of burned flesh.

Fletcher had gone perfectly rigid, mouth open, but he barely managed to make a low strangled sound, like he was already dying, a shudder going through him. He slumped a little, held up mostly by Pearce and the baton on his throat.

"Now," Pearce said, speaking a little slower in case Fletcher was too shocked to comprehend him. "You unlock the elevator, we all ride up and in ten minutes paramedics will save your life."

Fletcher's mouth opened and closed, he didn't blink as he the first shock faded and the agony came crashing down. He made a quiet, whimpering sound of pain. His fingers flexed in the empty air by his side and still without blinking, he looked down to where Pearce hadn't actually removed the gun.

He looked back up, eyes wide and his voice, when he spoke, was thin and broken, but he said, "No. Fuck you."

Coercion was a delicate art. Sometimes, if pushed too hard and too fast, people locked up out of spite, their loyalties and even survival instinct all became secondary, all that mattered was sticking it to the man, but Fletcher wasn't there, he was holding on by the skin of his teeth. Slowly, Pearce dug the barrel of the gun into the open wound, watched as Fletcher clenched his teeth hard in an effort not to scream, but Pearce didn't let up until a choked cry worked its way from Fletcher's throat.

"As deaths go, you've picked one of the bad ones," Pearce said. He pulled the gun back with the same deliberation, feeling Fletcher shiver at the edge of consciousness. Warm blood spilled down over his hand.

Behind him, Pearce heard Mia make a sound, like she was beginning to say his name and couldn't find her voice to do it, but Fletcher almost certainly missed it. Even the hint of support would strengthen his resolve now, but he was caught in a choking alternate reality, alone with Pearce and his torn insides.

"You know what to do," Pearce said calmly, picked up Fletcher's gaze and and led it back to the screen of the elevator controls, pinned it there with the promise of escape or even just relief. Fletcher was still for what felt too long, watery eyes unfocussed and his breathing came in shallow gasps.

Pearce eased up on his hold a little more and shifted to the side to give Fletcher enough room to breathe and steady himself, so he could reach for the display. Obediently, it lit up at his touch.

"Second floor," Pearce said and Fletcher hesitated, his fingers shaking. His face had gone so pale, Pearce wondered if he'd miscalculated and ruptured an artery, in which case Fletcher probably didn't have all of ten minutes. However, Fletcher still had the presence of mind to contemplate disobeying. It was obvious that Pearce was trying to circumvent the BCP forces amassing on ground level, Fletcher was thinking, clear as day written across his forehead, but perhaps if he was fast enough, Fletcher might be able to take them there anyway.

Casually, Pearce pulled the gun back, released the pressure of the baton and stepped back. Fletcher slumped a little, groaning in agony, but he kept his hand on the display and finally shifted his fingers to the glowing number Pearce had demanded.

Just as smoothly as before the elevator started moving again, as if nothing had interrupted it at all.

Pearce stepped away from Fletcher, fairly certain Fletcher was in no condition to attack either him or Mia and Fletcher's bloodshot gaze and pallid, sweat-slicked expression made it obvious he knew it, too. Carefully, he placed his hand over the injury on his belly, but didn't seem to dare to apply pressure, even though the blood was seeping through the material and slowly sokaing down his hip and thigh. Fletcher let his head drop into the wall and slowly, making quiet sounds of pain, slipped down until he huddled in the corner.

"What's next?" Mia asked, audibly trying to keep her voice from shaking and doing her best not to look at Fletcher for too long. Pearce tracked his attention over her, assessing her. Unlike her digital Lenses, she seemed to have mostly recovered from the taser attack and she had managed to come out of the fighting without anything more substantial than a slowly swelling cheek. He had't detected anything in her movement that suggested injury, so he assumed she was fine.

Pearce didn't answer at first, absent-mindedly he collapsed the baton and put it away, then checked his gun before holstering it. Instead he pulled out his phone and tapped on it.

"I'm trying to reach Dave," Pearce finally explained.

"You think he's still there?"

Pearce smirked just a little. "Yes, he sent me a text a little while ago."

"What's it say?"

"Nothing, it installed an app."

Mia frowned, hesitated and finally said, "Are you _sure_ it's Dave?"

Pearce chuckled and looked up at Mia.

"Pretty sure," he answered.

He could tell Mia disliked his dismissive tone. She wanted his reassurance, his confidence to feed off of. Perhaps she even wanted his compassion or at least pity for the BCP officer, still whimpering quietly to himself on the ground.

"A navigation app," he clarified as the pale blue overlay sprang up in his vision, tire tracks vanishing through the closed door of the elevator.

Mia pulled a face, gaze wandering around the small space. 

"Are you _sure_ it's…?" she repeated and trailed off at Pearce's failure to hide his amusement. She had some idea of what his network looked like, if she couldn't make an educated guess about his safeguards, he had no time to explain the intricacies to her. Though, he'd reluctantly admit Dave's skill level impressed him.

Pulling himself back to the present, he said, "We don't have a big window. BCP will know where we are when we get off. Expect more drones."

"Great," Mia muttered and rubbed her forehead where the taser had hit her.

"Just keep moving," he advised. "How many charges do you have?"

He'd seen her check them before, trying to avoid looking at Fletcher.

"Two dozen shots," she said. "Three full magazines."

She forced some shaky smile to put on and added, "That's a whole magazine better than you."

Because she'd been keeping her head down while he drew the heat, but he didn't point it out. It _was_ the tactic he'd suggested earlier, after all. He knew what she was capable of, but he trusted himself more.

"Conserve the EMP," he said. When she was back in the forest outside Tech Meadows, the silent EMP charges would make it easier to shake her pursuers.

"Stay close," Pearce added as the elevator braked gently. He met Mia's gaze in the brief moment before the doors unlocked and slipped back.

Blume must have evacuated the building, because the room beyond was an empty hallway, corridors leading off to the left and right. The last bright rays of sunset streamed in through the large window panes. His Lens automatically adjusted to the new light level, but Mia groaned and he caught her squinting, but didn't give her more time.

Dave's path lead them straight across the hallway to a stairway, the hovering image of the tire tracks leading the way. Pearce scaled the steps, taking two or three at the same time, hoping to gain as much distance as possible before BCP could tag them, or at least before they could catch up to them.

Drones were active again, swarming them the moment they stepped off the elevator, but either the virus had messed them up worse than Pearce could've hoped or their own alteration to their programming was causing bugs in their software. Barely any of them fired their taser projectiles and when they did, there was usually a longer pause beforehand, presumably to allow the drone to calculate which body part they should target. Mostly, they were just _following_ them, congealing behind and below when they ran up the next two floors.

Pearce shot the ones who got too close or threatened to get in their way, but he focussed on moving.

The tracks left the stairway and led into a corridor. Offices were split off by glass block walls, lining them on one side, windows overlooking the fence around Tech Meadows on the other side.

Ahead of them, the corridor changed into a skyway, winding away from the building they were in and towards another, further away from the fence and the dubious promise of escape.

He heard the bark of Mia's gun, quickly followed by the sound of two drones dropping to the ground. He didn't look, but Mia's snapped insult made it clear she got it covered, still holding a grudge over being tasered.

From the skyway, he could see the nearest buildings ahead and to the side of them. In the twilight, he saw dark shapes move into positions behind those windows and no doubt up along the roof, too, but they had another few moments before a sniper purge would be set up.

The tire tracks didn't cross the skyway, indeed, it appeared to nonsensically lead upward, through the glass ceiling and back to the building. Not bad, Pearce thought as he slowed down and pulled out his gun, it would take BCP a few more moments until the figured out where they'd gone.

He fired at the ceiling, shattered the glass and a hail of glittering shards dropped down. He holstered the gun to have both hands free and turned around.

"Mia! Moving up!"

She gave him a calculating look, from his invitingly folded hands up to the gaping hole in the ceiling, then seemed to give an inward shrug and took a running start and let herself be propelled upward. She caught the steel frame where the wall joined the ceiling and pulled herself up, quickly scrambled out of the way.

Pearce was right behind her. Without anyone to give him a leg-up, he'd simply retreated a few steps and took a short run-up, jumped and set his foot on the wall. He expected to slip on the smooth surface and did, lost a little momentum, but retained enough to launch himself high enough to get a hold of the beam running the outer edge of the skyway with one hand.

They were high enough up for the wind to nip at them both. Pearce felt the resistance as he pulled himself up and looked around for a moment. The trail still pointed them back to the building and up along its surface.

Though it looked smooth from below, up close, the large window panes were set in slightly protruding frames and the shutters offered enough handholds to make climbing feasible.

Dave's mapped path took them up two more stories, then around the corner of the building where they could climb up to an open balcony suspended out over the grass leading to the fence. The trail ended among tables and chairs.

Gunfire could be heard from inside the cafeteria, muzzle flashes of at least three different guns, bright in the gloom of the deserted space. A lanky shadow moved swiftly, aimed behind him and shot, then twisted around and fired at the glass front to clear the path. He crossed outside and slowed down.

Mia tensed, ready to go for her gun, but Pearce recognised Dave and when he didn't react, Mia relaxed slightly behind him. Walking towards each other, a momentarily casual stride in the middle of all this, they stopped in in the middle of the balcony.

Dave looked battered, blood running down his left arm and over the SMG he held. Dark marks were just visible on his neck, they looked like smudges in the twilight, but were most likely from someone trying to choke him. Dressed only in jeans and T-shirt, no doubt the rest of him was in no better shape. He held himself straight, with shoulders hanging a little, but more a sign of exhaustion than injury.

"You're slower than I thought," Dave greeted them.

"You're more _alive_ than I thought," Mia muttered.

Dave bared his teeth at her in a slow grin. "Rome wasn't built in a day," he assured her.

Dave glanced over his shoulder and pointed along the balcony with his gun. "You can get to the fence from that corner. It's…"

Pearce caught the movement behind Dave, barely more than a shift in the shadows, but it was more than enough warning to grip Dave's arm and twist him around before bullets impacted Pearce's back.

They dropped to the floor as shots ripped the windows apart and shattered the furniture all around them. Pearce had Dave half buried under him, sharing the protection of his bulletproof clothes.

Pearce spotted Mia scrambling back to the corner of the balcony, where the wall offered just enough room for cover. There wasn't enough space for three people and Pearce had no intention of staying out in the open like this. The opening barrage would be over any moment and they needed to be much better positioned by then.

Keeping himself between the BCP gunmen and Dave, Pearce manoeuvred them to the other end of the balcony. He used the chance to get a better look at the interior, looking for a path to close the gap to the enemy, but he could immediately tell that he'd have to rely on speed, trust the meta-material to take the worst of it and hope none of these shooters were lucky or had the time to aim.

From her corner, Mia had crouched down and began to return fire. Unlike the BCP, she was relying on short, quick bursts, taking the time to pick a target.

The BCP officers were slowly advancing into the room, protected by the suppressing fire of their bullets.

Dave edged down and shifted to the edge of the wall, brought his gun up and returned fire, giving Pearce the chance to lean over him and fire standing.

"How many?" Pearce asked, picking off the officers as fast as he could.

Dave snorted a mirthless laugh. "All?"

He took the time to glance over his shoulder and Pearce followed the direction of his gaze to the nearest building. Snipers would be in position soon and they had no cover at all from that direction.

"You had a plan," Pearce said.

"Yeah, I _had_ ," Dave replied. "But you were too slow."

A BCP officer nearly made it outside, two more right behind. Pearce aimed low and fired at the first man's knees, pulling the gun in motion with the running man, until the bullets battering the sensitive joint made themselves felt and he stumbled, trying to stop his fall by rolling awkwardly. It brought him to the edge of the balcony, close enough to take aim at Pearce and Dave, but before he could get his bearing enough, a bullet tore through his head.

The two BCP officers behind him scattered, one towards Mia, the other towards the two men. Pearce whipped his gun back up and shot, a burst into the closest man's neck and another at the hands of the other, Mia's shot finished him off.

"Plan B?" Pearce asked.

"Do I look like I have a surplus of contingencies?" Dave snapped back. At some point, he'd taken a grazing shot on his left arm, a new wound to bleed down and make his grip on his gun slippery.

Pearce took the time to regard him, snapping his gaze back and forth between Dave and their attackers, and making sure Mia didn't get overwhelmed. Then he looked over the ceiling of the cafeteria for the drone bulbs, spotted three of them.

Dave had almost certainly hacked the drones to make them remain dormant, though it was possible Blume had withdrawn them from the fight to save valuable property, especially since the drones weren't proving as effective as Blume's engineers had no doubt hoped. With any luck, there were more drones in adjoining rooms, but if Blume were replacing stationary cameras with them, it was a good bet.

Pearce laughed a little, entertained for a moment the thought that he might not sound entirely sane and Dave spared him a questioning look.

"Well, lucky for us, I do," Pearce said, transferred the gun into his left hand so he could drop his hand into his pocket for his phone, thumbed on it and called Mia.

Across the length of the balcony she sent him a look as she picked up.

_"What?"_

"When the shooting stops, you come over here, you fire the rope gun for the fence and go."

_"Why would the shooting stop?"_

Pearce gave her a quick, toothy grin. "Because 11.7 percent of the drones will explode."

Dave shot him a glance and muttered something inaudible, but didn't waste more time. Dead BCP officers were beginning to pile up on the threshold to the balcony, though most of the injured ones had withdrawn, creating some extra confusion for their colleagues.

"You realise your odds, right?" Dave asked from below, a sick amusement alight in his eyes.

"Yeah," Pearce merely shrugged and pulled back a little further into the corner as he scrolled through the settings of his phone, activating the virus and scanning his surrounding. Dave made a good point, of course. He'd calculated with at least a quarter of the drones getting infected and even then, he'd never had a handle on the actual distribution. All infected drones could be underground somewhere, or in far-away buildings where the chaos their explosion would cause was useless to them.

"And?" he asked as he lowered the phone and edged forward.

"Nothing," Dave chuckled, leaned out of cover and fired. "As in 'here goes nothing', of course."

Pearce shook his head, unwilling to let himself be distracted now, glanced at his phone, then flicked his thumb over the button without any decorum.

The effect was slightly delayed, as the data transfer took a little time through the old WSN technology he'd hi-jacked for his purposes. This way, he didn't have to transmit the signal across all of Tech Meadows — and give Blume a chance to jam it — but the signal would jump from drone to drone, even the non-infected ones would transmit it, due to an exploit in their standard port setting T-Bone had discovered while working on Rose.

One of the drones in the cafeteria exploded in a sharp snap of electricity, blue-white flames licking along the ceiling before the drone dropped to the ground where it continued to burn hotly, causing black smoke to rise from the smouldering ground. More explosions could be heard from further inside. Right above them, a window blew out and rained tiny shards over them.

Mia had jump-started when the first drone blew up and skittered into Pearce's and Dave's corner of the balcony as black smoke began to fill the cafeteria and waft out. For the moment, the shooting had indeed stopped.

She wasted no time on talking, pulled out the rope gun and fired across to the fence. Another explosion happened somewhere below, followed by several smaller ones, the drone must have set off other things, just as Pearce had hoped. From the corner of his eyes, he saw several floors of another building suddenly go dark.

Mia secured the other end of the rope, briefly tested it, then climbed up to the balustrade, where she stopped.

"Go," Pearce snapped, scanning the rooftops. His tone pushed Mia out to the rope, giving him a long look, clearly wanting to say something — or wanting _him_ to say something, but an enterprising BCP officer rolled onto the balcony and opened fired at their corner before Pearce had time to react.

The bullets impacted his chest and arm before he leapt at the man, not wasting time on aiming his gun or drawing that baton. He kicked the man's gun out of his hands, snapped down and his elbow in his face. Instead of futile holding on to the gun, the BCP officer simply let go and bent his upper body back. He failed to avoid Pearce's blow, but it didn't hit him with full force. The man rolled back and tried to regain his feet, caught Pearce's arm and the uppercut he'd thrown. Pearce stepped in close and smacked his head down, breaking the man's nose. The BCP officer was dazed for only a second, but it was enough for Pearce to get a good hold on him, tightened it and with a hard wrench, broke his neck and drop him.

Ready for more, Pearce peered into the smoke, but for the moment, there was nothing there. Looking up, Mia had finally got the hint and was already halfway across the rope.

"Mr. Vigilante!" Dave called and his attention finally dropped to Dave, watching him struggle to stand. Most of the bullets had hit Pearce without doing much damage, but Dave had been right next to him in the narrow corner. At a glance, Pearce spotted the bloodied holes in Dave's shirt, he counted three and a fourth which had ripped out a chunk of his arm, judging by the rivulet of blood running down. All three would be lethal without help, Pearce could tell and by the look in Dave's face, he knew it, too. By all accounts, he shouldn't even be standing.

"You know who Emily Knight is?" Dave asked with preternatural calm, grinning through bloodied teeth.

"Head of BCP," Pearce answered, tilted his head to survey the area without leaving Dave or the smoke-filled cafeteria out of sight. Every so often, small explosions still went off in the distance, lights randomly flickering out all across Tech Meadows, thin lines of smoke emerging from broken windows. The wind picked them up, but instead of dispersing the smoke, it covered the area with a fog like gossamer.

A bullet ripped into the concrete by Dave's head and both men flinched down, barely wasted a glance in the direction it had come from. The snipers were finally in position, no doubt fighting through the confusion of the exploding drones. Pearce spotted Mia, dropping herself over the fence and into the treacherous safety of the forest beyond. If she had any sense, she'd figure out she had nothing to gain by sticking around until Pearce joined her, but he didn't have time to tell her as much.

Pearce and Dave pressed themselves against the balcony's balustrade, though at best it made the snipers' aim difficult, the thin layer wasn't going to offer any protection whatsoever. He couldn't escape the way Mia had, he'd be too exposed on the rope, even with the bulletproof shirt and moving quickly.

Awkwardly, with just one good arm left, Dave clamped his gun under his arm, fingered for his phone and tapped on it with only a quick glance down. Instantly, Pearce received a new message from him.

"I got the key to her Papavero Concept for you," Dave said. "Have fun."

"All I got to do is get there," Pearce remarked.

Rather than pocket the phone, Dave simply dropped it, carefully shifted the gun back into his hand and raised it a little, making him look almost battle ready.

"Oh please, don't disappoint me now, Mr. Vigilante," Dave said in what was neither quite a sneer, nor quite a cackle. Pain creased his face as he moved forward a little, though tried to keep his head below the balustrade. "Just don't be slow this time," Dave added.

Pearce hesitated, considered making a run for the rope and the fence again, but decided against it. He stood a better chance if he climbed down the side of the building, sticking to the shadows, while Dave drew the BCP's attention and fire. He had a small window of confusion to work with, unreliable lighting in the encroaching darkness and a fast getaway car waiting for him.

He nodded, gave Dave a quick pat on the shoulder, but said nothing. He _had_ nothing to give and Dave certainly didn't want or need a halfhearted pep talk when there wasn't time for one.

Pearce slunk along the outside of the balcony, hopefully out of sight of the sniper, found the darkest spot he could before he peered over the side and down, looking over the side of the building. It was very much the same as he'd come with Mia before, though climbing down would be harder in many ways than up or across.

He looked back at Dave, perched behind the balustrade, breathing hard but clearly ready, sick glow in his eyes and at least, Pearce thought, they both understood what it meant and why it was there. He caught Dave's gaze, held it and nodded again.

Without waiting for confirmation, Pearce gripped the side of the balcony's balustrade and levered himself up. He heard the sniper shots behind him, snapping for where Dave would have stood up. Just a second, before Dave rushed inside, hidden by the shadows of the darkened room and the slowly dispersing smoke. It would take him out of the snipers' range and right into however many BCP officers were in position, waiting for just such a move.

Clinging to the wall in the shadow, guessing his footholds in the darkness more than he saw them, Pearce heard the shooting take up again, the noise muffled through the growing distance. Pearce couldn't stop his mind from identifying the different guns, noting the chatter of the BCP SMGs, like the one Dave was using and different sounds of various handguns as they were brought into play.

He reached the ground. Above him, the gunfire had already stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Relevant Terms:**  
>  **WSN** (Wireless sensor network): limited range networks.  
>  **Papavero Concept** is a sports car I just invented. Pick your favourite fast car, add ten years of development and enjoy.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on 19/Nov/2016**


	9. Gunmetal Sky – Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Aiden's gun** isn't actually specified and I'm afraid I'm not as consistent about it as I'd like. So instead of trawling through the previous chapters (I'm lazy like that), here's an explanation that plugs the potential plotholes: It's a next-gen model of the auto-6 with a suppressor. I calculated with twelve shots per magazine (making it an auto-12, if you want to be precise).

 

Pearce crouched on top of an awning. In the dark, the buildings of Tech Meadows' sweeping shapes protruded from the ground like dinosaur skeletons, white and reflective where the lamps or a fire traced their outline, providing ample shadows for him to hide in.

He'd capitalised on the BCP's confusion after reaching solid ground and covered more of Tech Meadows than he could have hoped to, most of it even at a flat out run. But it had revealed several things, all of which were on their own ticking clock.

Blume's surveillance was still not running or at least still not able to identify or track him.

BCP was not prepared for the kind of assault and intrusion he'd subjected them to.

They did get a lot of security personnel on the ground quickly, but much of their forces had been focussed underground and Wyland's last stand had redirected their bulk in the wrong area as well.

But when BCP _did_ start to reorganise, they managed to lock down the area a lot tighter than that. Pearce suspected some hidden genius had been involved in planning the overall layout of Tech Meadows. Its open spaces and convenient hiding places were more concentrated at the centre, but the closer to its outer edge he got, the more unexpected choke-points he encountered. Either because buildings were set too close together or because flower beds and lawn were open enough to monitor by few BCP officers stationed at strategic points.

Other units of BCP officers were quickly establishing a search pattern on the grounds, designed to hem him in, no matter where he'd gone to ground. Evading these units had forced him up on the awning, which he'd used to run the length of the building it was attached to.

It had started to rain earlier, just a soft drizzle, but enough to make the steel and glass under his feet treacherous and uncertain. He'd considered going further up, along the side of the building where even trained people often forgot to look, but the rain made the idea unappealing. It wouldn't help him much, anyway. Without access to the underground structure, he'd just be stuck on top of a building.

Slowly, he edged forward until he was close to where the awning ended, hung on steel wires traversing his vision. Ahead of him, he saw the large, square shape of the car park that had replaced most of the original buildings of Blume HQ and below him, two BCP officers stood between portable barricades, occasionally turning to survey all directions.

"Do we even know what's happening?" the woman asked, she was standing almost directly below Pearce.

Her colleague chortled. "It's probably just a drill," he said, tapped a quick rhythm on top of the barricade as he strolled by.

"You think? Even the explosions? There was definitely a shooting over at the VR building. That was _never_ just a drill."

Her colleague waved his hands in the air. "Fuck if I know," he said. "VR's on the other end, so I don't think we'll be seeing a lot of action over her. Just the same boring, endless nightsh-…"

With the low snap of a suppressor, a bullet punched through his forehead, jerking his head back sharply before he collapsed, never getting a chance for the stunned expression on his face to even fade.

His colleague reacted on training alone, dropped into a defensive stance and going for her gun before the events had even properly registered, she sent a quick glance darting around and took one thoughtless step towards the dead man. Well out from under the awning, just as Pearce had hoped she would.

He leapt from the edge and dropped on her, tore her to the ground and knocked the gun out of her hand, kept her pinned with his weight and knocked the baton against her throat before he yanked it back with full force. She struggled, panicked, ineffectively clawing at the baton at her throat, shifting her body in an attempt to dislodge him.

Pearce fisted a hand into her hair and yanked her head back, realised the baton from her throat, twisted it around and hammered the handle into her temple several times until she finally went limp.

Both bodies were hidden by the barricade, for the patrols, it'd look like the officers had left their position. It was likely someone would come to investigate, or their radio silence would draw attention, but before Pearce could jump back to his feet, bright white light flooded his vision and made him drop back into a crouch, drawing back towards the building to orient himself and wait for his vision to adjust.

Blume had fired what seemed to be flares into the air all across Tech Meadows. Bright spheres, shivering just a little as they hung suspended in the air. Pearce watched them for a long moment, narrowed gaze against their glare. Not flares, he corrected himself. Probably drones. Rose and the security drones lacked a feature like this, but it made sense for Blume to design them for different tasks. They hadn't seen drones like this in action while staking out the place, but perhaps it was an emergency feature, or they were prototypes, which would account for how long it had taken Blume to bring them into play.

Slipping from shadow to shadow was no longer an option and his time was running out until stationary surveillance would be able to pick up on his location. BCP would be able to overwhelm him quickly, even if he made himself a moving target. He slipped back to the BCP officer he'd shot, sized him up for a moment, then bent down to strip him of the pale coat he wore against the rain, Blume's logo splashed across the back. Thin and rubbery, the light colour would be useless for camouflage, but with everything illuminated, hiding in plain sight was the only option he had left.

The coat didn't fit too well, but it would do. He straightened up as he shrugged into it, reassessed the situation around him, than stepped past the barricade and onto the paved path leading to the car park.

He paced himself, carefully, to vaguely match the gait of the patrolling BCP officers, feeling the time tick away at the back of his head. He was perfectly exposed like this, out in the open and every step he took on the path took him further away from cover. Any of the nearby rooftops could have snipers on them, any second RealMe's or even Profiler's error message could resolve and reveal his real name.

His instincts told him to run. It wasn't that far, even at a slow jog, he would only take a few minutes until he was at the car park.

The car park was locked down tight, more portable barricades set up around the glass front of the stairway and doors and even at a glance, he spotted two dozen BCP officers circling the large building with doubtlessly more inside. He slowed to a saunter, followed the outline of the path as it turned away from the car park and led into a canopied pavilion, where he stopped, leaned into a steel beam with one shoulder.

Picking up his phone, he scanned the car park. He ran a search for open ports and frequencies, but Blume had locked their digital world down just as tight as the real one. Movement caught his attention and he snapped his head around to watch a group of BCP units turn a corner and head for the pavilion.

Too many to take them all out without drawing attention, but perhaps the time for sneaking around was gone anyway. He needed to break through to the car park, scatter the BCP officers there.

In the last few moments before the BCP patrol was too close, he opened the app Wyland had sent with the car key. As one of the most modern cars on the market, the Concept had software to match and Wyland had unlocked it all. The app told him exactly where the car was parked and after a tap, even calculated the path for him, he didn't transfer it to the Lens, he didn't need the distraction.

There was too much open space on the way to the car park, too many patrols about to dodge them and even if he somehow could get past them, he still had to get into the car park, where too many people were stationed. He needed to get them moving, draw them away and maybe he could be fast enough to sneak in before they regrouped.

He drew his gun, checked the ammo and suppressed a grimace. Twenty shots total, not nearly enough even if he got close enough to take some of them out with the baton. He hefted the gun, finger gently tracing the outline of the trigger guard as he pushed himself off from the pillar he'd been leaning against.

Deliberately, he stepped out in the open, let his gaze travel around the landscape surrounding the pavilion, loosely mapping a path he could take, but not overtly concerned with it. He'd have to adapt on the run, anyway.

Something about his posture must have rattled the group of BCP personnel, first slowing down for a step or two, then speeding up, edging their guns forward a little as they got closer, Pearce's shoddy disguise unravelling.

Free of the pillar, Pearce raised his gun and fired two shots, each ripping through a head. The shock scattered the last member of unit, a moment when he focussed on his fallen colleagues and Pearce ducked back into the pavilion and vaulted over the side before the answering fire ripped into the glass and wood structure.

Below the pavilion, a paved plaza was interspersed by benches and large, concrete planters stretching all the way to a hedge and a row of trees. Beyond was the less appealing bulk of a warehouse.

Pearce dropped to a crouch behind the planters, kept on the move. Bullets hit the planters' stone, caused dust and small shards to fly, ripped through leaves and flower petals, but he didn't slow down or return fire. He threw himself around a corner and glanced up carefully. He saw BCP officers carefully advance on him, the two patrols he had seen and the people from a barricade outside a building's front entrance.

Someone shouted and broke into a run, clearly intending to make the cover of the planters under covering fire. Sneering, Pearce gauged the man's speed and angle, let him come close, then deliberately leaned into the bullets, felt them impact his side, but not hard enough to ruin the shot completely. His bullet tore open the running man's neck and he went down drawing a spray of blood with him.

Pearce ducked back into cover before the enemy bullets could adjust. His side ached where the bullets had hit, made him briefly wonder just how much the meta-material would still be able to take.

Keeping low, he crossed to behind another planter, stealing a quick look at the barricade by the car park entrance. Further away than the others, they had realised what was happening and most BCP from the ground would be converging on his position by now, he might have a handful of minutes before there were too many of them. With any luck, it'd even take some heat off Mia, making it easier for her to lose them in the woods.

Behind him, the first BCP officers had reached the planters, he saw their heads bobbing over the edges as they tried to sneak around him. Pearce picked the feeble cover of a bench to duck behind, pick out his targets and shot when someone's head came up a little too far. Another man had his face shattered just as he left cover.

A hail of bullets tore the bench to shards and Pearce drew back around the side of another planter, getting within range of the hedge. It was too high to leap over and too dense to force through, making him snarl. From the distance, he'd assumed he could get through.

"I see him!" someone shouted, stupidly giving their position away and sparing Pearce the effort of locating them. Somewhere behind and to the left. Pearce snapped around, put his back to the concrete outline of a planter and saw someone lean out of cover just ahead. Another BCP officer was just getting in position above and behind the first.

Pearce shot the first man's head, but the second one had a better reaction time, the bullet only hit his shoulder when he had the right instinct of getting up instead of down, trusting his body armour. Pearce agreed, without armour, he'd never have got this far, but even he still sometimes had to fight the instinct of seeking cover at the exclusion of all else. Pearce snapped his gun up and his shot hit the grip or the hands of the BCP officer, smacking the weapon out of his hand, buying Pearce the opportunity to leap at him and fold his hand over the BCP officer's head and smash it into the metal armrest of a bench. Pearce clawed into the man's hair for a better grip, smashed him down again for good measure and left him there.

He ran along the side of the hedge, making several yards before the next shots took aim at him, bit through the hedge and nipped at his heels. He jumped at the edge of a planter, used it to propel himself higher and over the hedge, where he rolled back to his feet. Bullets penetrated the hedge, but he was momentarily out of sight.

Several van were parked along the side of a ramp and closed gate. One van was parked right next to it, its back open and stacks of pallets inside, the lockdown must have hit right in the middle of loading or unloading. Pearce circled the van and slowed down behind its front wheel.

The asphalt street ran the length of the warehouse. Ahead of him, it lead to a barricaded and closed gatehouse, right next to the car park.

The display in his left Lens flashed a notification.

[Open port found: Landrock Motors eRelegator II (Firmware 17.9.4.1)]

[Connect?]

He allowed himself a little smile even as the first bullet snapped into the van. He leaned around the front, watched the BCP officers advancing on him from the car park, leaving the barricades and doors under supervision of only a few people. Pearce aimed and fired, hit one man in the shoulder, uselessly, but it was enough to remind the others of their instincts and they scattered, heading for cover instead of pressing on. He fired again, this time punching through a man's skull. The BCP officer nearest him stopped, bent down to grip him and drag him with him. Pearce flexed his trigger finger away, watched the man's head leave his scope. He ejected the spent magazine, snapped the last one in and took a breath as he slipped his thumb over the button on his phone to take control over the eRelegator. 

Some noise alerted him to something behind and he brought his attention around just in time to see someone drop behind a just unloaded pallet and somebody else stuck the muzzle of their gun past the rear of the van.

Pearce ran the length of the van back, kicked the muzzle out of range, swung around the corner and brought his gun into the man's face, fired. He heard the gunshot from the side, where he saw more BCP officers come around the hedge, felt the heat and the sting on his shoulder, but paid it no attention. The BCP officer had stepped out from behind the pallet, gun trained right at Pearce's face, but he had underestimated Pearce's speed. Dropping his own gun, Pearce lunged for the man's hand around his gun, forced both back and around. The position brought their faces close, Pearce saw the shock when the man realised what it meant when he wasn't strong enough to stop Pearce form pointing his own gun against the side of his head. Pearce slid his fingers down over the trigger, circumventing whatever smart gun system the BCP was using.

Another snot snarled past Pearce, then a volley hit his back, harder each time, almost driving the air form his lungs in the time it took to pick up his gun at a run and return to the side of the van, temporarily shielded from the advancing security personnel.

Using the overrides in his phone, Pearce started the van's engine and mapped out a route for its autopilot feature, then set it in motion and on a collision course with the glass front of the car park door. He ran alongside it, keeping it carefully between him and most of the BCP officers, though the moment the van had started moving, he was opening himself up to attack from behind as they followed. Only the haphazard placement of the already unloaded pallets prevented straight shots at him.

He kept pace with the van, but he had enough time to fire back, at least slow down their advance. Aimed for their heads and faces, wasting no bullets on elaborate stunts like shooting their guns out of their hands or making them stumble by firing at their legs.

With his other hand, he worked on his phone, called on the Concept's software, told it to unlock and unpark itself, so he'd only need to dive in once he got to it.

By the car park, the BCP people by the barricades had realised the van was heading straight at them. They thought they could stop it with concerted fire, but that was the beauty of electric cars, apart from a little oil, there was very little likely to explode and even if they got lucky and damaged the motor, the van had enough speed and momentum to smash into them anyway.

A sharp pain cut across the back of his calf, he felt the wetness glueing his trousers to his leg before the pain registered and he missed a step, nearly lost the van from his side. The next steps shot more pain up his leg, made it harder to keep up with the van, but the car park was close now.

He ignored the pain, but let himself fall back a little from the van, using the corner of the car park to cover at least one side. He dragged his finger over the dial on his phone and the van sped up on the last few yards.

Standing still allowed the world to sharpen into slower, clearer relief, allowing him to pick out the targets he wanted to make an example of. He'd never unscrewed the suppressor from his gun, the noise reduction was unnecessary, but the lower recoil meant he didn't need so much time to bring his gun around and line up the next shot. His focus was almost more on the bullets, counting them off as he fired.

The van smashed into the barricade and scattered the pieces everywhere, then hit the glass structure of the stairway with unmitigated speed, glass shattered and the metal bent out of shape as the van sheared into the wall beyond. Someone screamed and as Pearce threw himself around the corner, he saw someone crushed between the wall and the debris. Shards fell like rain and the motor of the van snarled as it encountered resistance, unable to go to the speed its software demanded.

Still with shots dogging him, Pearce pushed through the webwork of broken metal and glass to the door leading into the car park. The door swung loosely closed behind, shuddering as bullets hit it.

Pearce switched on the navigation, followed the pale line splashed on his Lens. It lead him past several rows of parked cars and the low, thick pillars of concrete holding up the bulk of the car park.

He heard the hiss of the door as the BCP filed into the garage. He pressed his back to a pillar and glanced around, watching for a moment as they slowly fanned out from the door, looking for him. Dropping back to his knees, Pearce kept the parked cars between him and his pursuers, picked his way through them as quietly as he could.

The posture put more strain on his leg and shoulder, slowed him down more than he'd have liked. Bunkering down by a car, he slipped his hand along his calf, feeling out the extend of the damage. It was still bleeding, must have torn some muscles to make moving as painful as it did. He ripped the scarf from his neck and slung it around the injury, pulled it tight as new pain spiked up through his leg, but the bandage offered some faint support and relief.

Scrambling back to his feet, he hurried along the aisle, following the path. He could probably get the Concept to come to him, too, but he'd prefer to not expose the car to too much gunfire, he needed it functional.

A few other open ports flared up on his Lens, cars with software he had backdoors into, but a quick check showed they were all much higher up. The VIPs parked on ground level, and none of their cars offered the same access. He wondered how Wyland had managed to clone Emily Knight's car key, but he had a feeling Wyland had had the same instinct as T-Bone: just amass an arsenal as varied as you could and then see what left the biggest dent in your enemy's armour.

Hope Blume's well insured, Pearce thought as a particularly concerted effort to take him down destroyed at least two cars and badly damaged a third as he dove behind it. He rolled back to his feet, vaulted over the hood of the next car and ran the length of it. Just ahead, the Concept was parked, sensing the proximity of the key, it opened the door on the driver's side, but Pearce found the right button and made the car open the door on the passenger side, started the engine and made it roll forward slowly.

For a heartbeat's duration, Pearce braced himself, caught his breathing and let the strained muscles in his legs release slightly, preparing to propel himself into a run.

He heard the shouting as the BCP officers reacquired their target, followed by the gunfire eating into the asphalt just behind him. He dove into the car and hit the acceleration at the same time. The car shot forward smoothly, closed the doors automatically.

Bullets hit the Concept, but apparently, being head of security at Blume meant you drove a bulletproof car, because the thin, anti-scratch coating most new cars had wouldn't stand up to bullets like this.

Without any further instructions, the car continued to accelerate for a moment, but then slowed down in order not to crash into the wall. Pearce scrambled into the driver's seat, accepted the car's request to connect with his Lenses. The dashboard inside the car dimmed as the information was displayed on the Lens, speed and proximity warnings, surround view of the car where there used to be only mirrors.

A sign flared up as he put his hands on the wheel.

[Caution: Manual Control ON]

He pulled the wheel around, took the car around the gentle slope leading down to the outer gate. It was barricaded, much like it had been from the other side, though manned markedly less thickly. They were ready for him, but they didn't expect the gate to pick up the identifier of Knight's car and open without any input of his own. Solid steel slid out of his way and the barricade and the BCP personnel had the choice between throwing themselves out of his way or be mowed down as the sleek Concept shot past them and finally out into the open just outside Blume's prestigious Tech Meadows.

The winding, somewhat forlorn road that used to lead up to Blume HQ had been expanded to account for the increased traffic brought on by Blume's growth. There was talk to run an L line all the way out here, but Chicago, Pawnee and Blume were still squabbling over who'd foot most of the bill.

However, the terrain still dictated the route, slow bents to account for the rocky underground and the view through the windows was as spectacular as it had always been, Chicago's skyline reflected shimmering on the water, seemingly pushed further away by thin fog and soft rain washing out its brilliant colours.

Connecting to the car's interface had blown his phone wide open for a hacker attack, but there was nothing on it beyond what he knew he needed, no information that'd help Blume or the cops track T-Bone or Mia, but he couldn't contact them.

The empty road pulled away under the car, nearly vibrationless at the speed it was going, soundless with its electric motor, comforting simplicity in its HUD design. He felt a little sorry that he wouldn't get to keep the car, or ever acquire another one. He rubbed his hand over his forehead before he realised he'd been doing it, felt the way his attention started to wander in the sudden quietness. His leg was still bleeding and whatever bruises his back and shoulders had sustained were starting to pulse through him despite the human-engineered seat of the expensive car.

The sudden quiet was seductive, brought on by the perfect car and the fact that he'd managed to get out of Blume HQ alive, an outcome that had barely featured in even the best-case scenarios he'd ran in his head. Like Wyland, he'd been prepared to go down, though for widely different reasons than the Dave had had. Fatigue crept up on him, the dull ache of pain sapping his strength and ability to concentrate.

The throbbing of a helicopter made itself heard first, ripped through his awareness and dragged his senses back to the razor edge. A bright white searchlight cut across the mountains, right before the helicopter itself came into view. A bent allowed him to see the road ahead and the police barricade, long enough for him to see the spike strips laid out across the road, glinting viciously in the blue signal lights of the police cruisers parked across the road behind them. More roadblocks were visible just beyond, flickering blue light ghosting throughout Pawnee just ahead.

Pearce reached for the phone, quickly going through the controls of the car, dismissing warnings as he disabled most of its assistance and safety features. The last thing he needed was his car trying to be smarter than him during dicey manoeuvres.

He tossed the phone into the passenger seat when he was through, next to his nearly empty gun, and took both hands to the wheel, flexing his fingers in mixed apprehension and anticipation, holding straight at the cops. He observed as they took a disbelieving step back from their barrier, not sure yet if it was time for them to run. At the very last moment, Pearce took the car to the right, into the softened dirt of a slope, the speed pushing him scratching past the police cruiser, punching it aside and into the scattering cops.

Even so, it was a tight fit and he nearly misjudged the slope at the side of the road, almost tipping the car over and its wheels lost contact with the ground, then bounced unevenly back on the road, fishtailing for a moment until Pearce could steady it.

The cops on the next roadblock were ready for him, in cover behind the doors of their cars, opening fire at the shielded Concept, the impacts rattling off the finish like hail. Pearce sheared past them to the right again, ploughed down a ramshackle wooden fence and had to manoeuvre the car through tightly planted trees. Rather than push back through to the main road, he took the narrow road winding up the mountains and further into Pawnee's badly-kept underbelly.

It took a few minutes and several sharp turns before the cops caught up with him, but the helicopter stayed with him throughout. A few times he managed to lose it behind some rocky outcropping somewhere in the landscape, but it always found him again. Police cruisers overtaking him by chasing down parallel roads, then cutting across to cut him off, but the Concept easily outclassed them whenever he hit even a short stretch of straight road and his control of it was far better than cops, he spotted getting lost behind him as they missed a corner. All he had to do was reach the open road, he could shake even the helicopter if he could bring the car's speed to bear.

He took a turn into a narrow street, spotted the dead-end right away, but instead of slowing down, he hits the gas more, pushing the car through the sludge that made the high-performance tyres struggle for a moment, until he got the car back to speed. In front of him, several layers of corrugated sheet iron served as roof to a shed. He doubted the makeshift construction would withstand the car, but all he needed was a little boost to clear the low wall at end of the street.

The car shook, resisted, and the metal screamed, broke away under him, but the car's speed made it overshoot, only one back tyre scraping over the wall. The car dropped hard to the ground, tyres kicking up smoke even on the wet underground before they regain their traction and Pearce steadied the car back on the asphalt, accelerating away from the cops whose cars' safety features almost certainly prevented all of them from following.

The helicopter was still above him, but the blue flaring lights and the police cruisers they belonged to were lost somewhere behind him as he cleared the last row of houses and the road opened up as it left he town behind.

Ahead, more lights announced the last police barricade, this one with all the held-up traffic lined up behind it, bright points of headlights, neatly stacked. The other side of the road was empty.

This time, Pearce misjudged the angle with which he hit the cruiser, it snagged on his car, as the cop in the car made his car make a sharp lurch backward, almost knocking the Concept over the spikes. The Concept rotated nearly a half-circle, Pearce punched in the reverse, hit the gas, than flipped the wheel so the car swung back around smoothly.

A warning flared in his Lens, someone was trying to access the car's software, sending override commands, but he'd been waiting for that for a while now. His phone automatically installed its own firewall, but he doubted it would hold out for very long.

He considered trying to outrun his pursuers, he was on the open road now, where he'd wanted to be, but he probably didn't have enough time. Instead, he took the Concept to a dirt road on the next turn, barely wide enough for a car, making the Concept struggle again, slowed him down and the police re-appeared behind him.

He followed the road for several turns until he spotted the train-tracks cutting across his path just ahead, an unguarded crossing, no toys for him to spring here. He hit the middle of the crossing, braked sharply to make the car swivel on the spot and he could drive down the tracks.

The warning flared up again and he cursed. He wasn't gaining enough distance to ditch the car, the cops still too close on him and the damn helicopter searchlight streaking over him, though trees were beginning to block it out. All he needed was a few minutes, _half_ a minute would do and he could get lost in the woods, on foot, the cops wouldn't be able to find him, the terrain was too rough for them to effectively block it off and he knew how to keep his head down.

At the next crossing, he took the car back to the road for a short stretch and around a corner onto another dirt path leading into the woods. He took several more sharp turns, putting a little more distance between himself and his pursuers and for a second, his surrounding fell into darkness, the blue flares of the police growing distant and he couldn't see the helicopter anymore.

The car went dead and the HUD projection in his Lens vanished.

"Oh, fuck," he snarled, surprised at how rough his voice sounded in the sudden quietness. He'd almost had it. It had almost been enough.

In a surge of anger, he punched the wheel, but all that did was making it look up and there was no resistance under the gas and brake anymore. Speed and momentum kept the car on track for an endless second, before the dirt path turned away to the left under him. The car hit the side of a tree sharply, normally the impact would've caused the airbags to fire, but he'd turned these off earlier.

As if being tossed between them, the car hit several more tree, each spinning it into a new angle before it hit another, boxing it down a slope. It still had enough speed to shoot across the road there, mow over the tall board of a hiking map, then collide head first with an overgrown boulder protruding from the undergrowth. Front and sides dented and dirtied, the wrecked Concept came to a standstill, lay motionless like a carcass in the darkness.

The helicopter searchlight cut across the wreck, shivered and circled around it, as if it wanted to keep it pinned there until the police arrived, their sirens and lights already drawing close.

The door was stuck, locked or just jammed, Pearce couldn't tell and didn't care. Vertigo washing over him, it took a little for his coordination to allow him to pull himself from the seat and gave the window a kick. It didn't budge, despite the myriad tiny cracks running across it.

Momentarily too spent to continue, Pearce let his head hang back, resting with his shoulders on the passenger seat until he'd scraped together some remnant willpower. Deep down in the footwell, he spotted his gun and reached for it. Shot the three remaining bullets at the window, then tried to kick it out again.

At last, the window gave in and Pearce heaved himself through, dropped inelegantly on the ground just outside the car and sucked in a deep breath of cool air to clear his head. It wasted time he didn't have, blinded by the helicopter searchlight and the blue police signal lights it joined.

The police cruisers stopped in a tight half-circle on the muddy ground around the crashed car. Doors were thrown open and cops piled out, anxiety masquerading as caution as they slowly closed in.

Pearce rolled up into a crouching position, one leg out and ready to spring. He'd flicked the baton out with the same movement, only distantly aware how lucky he was to still have it at all.

From the helicopter, a sniper's laser-sight traced a red dot from his chest over his face from above. Knowing, or at least assuming, his body armour would deflect most bullets, even the cops' assault rifles would need a moment to penetrate the layer, unless they hit some of the weakened areas by luck or intention. If he didn't let the pain stop him, he could cross the open space to the cops. Counting them off in that first instant, he watched a fifth and sixth police car stop behind the others, but he could take six people. Or eight. Or however many there were. All he needed was a momentary edge.

"DROP YOUR WEAPON!"

Against the glaring lights of the police cruisers, it was hard to figure out which of the officers had shouted the order, but Pearce turned his gaze in the direction anyway, slowly, bore through the brightness until his eyes adjusted and he could make a reasonable guess who it had been and fix on him. Then, a shudder of the helicopter dragged the laser sight through his eye and his night vision blanked out on one side.

"DROP YOUR WEAPON _NOW!"_

He felt the familiar weight of the baton in his hand, knew he'd only need seconds to get there, but they were seconds he didn't have. He'd lost them somewhere during the chase, or earlier than that. Maybe he hadn't even had them coming in.

He hadn't expected how much it would take to ease that grip, relax each small muscle one after the other until the baton could slip heavily from his hand. It thudded to the soft ground, buried itself into the mud with its weight, still within temptingly easy reach.

"GET ON THE GROUND!"

The voice was wavering just a little, trying to sound threatening and overdoing it, closer to hysterics than intimidation. Slowly, Pearce pulled his leg in until he was kneeling, raised his hands, palms out and empty so as not to trigger a reaction in the over-nervous cops.

"ON THE FUCKING GROUND!"

Pearce took a breath, he wasn't sure himself why he needed it. A moment to taunt them, to see if he could push them over the edge by simply doing nothing. He collected himself, needed the respite to get his body to comply, pulled too tense and too ready to fight to simply lay down when ordered to.

He moved as glacially as he could, forcing his enemies to make the call and stand by it afterwards. He wasn't sure what the aftermath of his death would be for the gunman who'd downed him. Praise or persecution, both were equally possible, most likely something of both, too. Either way, he didn't envy them the burden. Bringing his left hand down to support himself as he lowered himself to lay flat on the ground, his hands resting loosely by his side.

The ground was soft against his cheek, cooler than he had expected, he exhaled and let the tension slowly bleed away into the wet ground. He could still see the laser sight hovering over his head and face, but for a moment, everything was still.

In fact, it took the cops an entire minute until they broke their position and advanced on him. Their shadows passed over him and the barrel of a gun dug into the back of his skull. After a moment, a second barrel pushed over the edge of his collar and came to rest on his neck. He tried not to strain. In his field of vision, he saw the boot of one of the two cops, close to his hand.

"Don't move," someone growled over him, jabbed with the gun for emphasis. A third cop stepped past him, leaned down and a moment later his searching hands pressed down between his shoulder blades, then patted their way up his sleeves, taking his time to check for hidden weapons.

"You're under fucking arrest," the cop said as he closed his hand on Pearce's wrist and pulled his arm back. Unlike the two with their guns to his head or whoever had shouted before, this one sounded a little calmer and more controlled, resisted the urge to yank on Pearce's arms and inflict a little extra discomfort just because he could. The handcuffs snapped closed. It wasn't the sound Pearce remembered from his youth, this was a smooth, whispering sound and he felt the metal draw close to his wrists without constricting the blood-flow.

With Pearce's hands secure, the cop started to pat down Pearce's sides, reached into the pockets of the rubber coat, then his touch slipped down his legs, probing the edges of his boots before he withdraw. There were no weapons, Pearce had left the gun and his phone in the car and the Lens had gone dark. He guessed the phone had been damaged in the crash.

The gun barrels were withdrawn from his head and neck and their owners stepped back while the one who'd cuffed him said, "Alright, get up."

The cop gripped his arm and pulled him up, gave Pearce a slight shove to get him walking. Upright again, Pearce saw that too many of the cops had drawn close to him, building an untidy cluster from all sides, making sure he had nowhere to run even if he somehow got loose.

It was quiet on the street, almost tranquil. The rain had slowed to a lazy drizzle, hissing as it hit the flames licking up from the wrecked Papavero Concept. Blue lights from the police cruiser brushed over the scene, cooly unimpressed. The laser sights were gone, but the helicopter search continued to paint bright swathes of light across the street as Pearce was brought to a police cruiser, a hand made him bow his head as he was pushed into the back seat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Revised on 19/Nov/2016**


	10. Command & Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Know when you're beaten.

 

Only half a year earlier, Pawnee had been gifted with a brand-new police station, Blume's state of the art installation, new cars, new guns, new interface with ctOS, new everything.

CPD Lieutenant John Yamada stepped somewhat reluctantly out of his car and squinted up at the building. It stood out in the rural quaintness of Pawnee like a crashed UFO, bright smooth white wall and the futuristic design that was all the rage up at Tech Meadows. Privately, he wasn't quite sure if it was sending the right signal to the public about police independence, but perhaps if it bothered you, you'd have moved to the Offliners' trailer park by now.

The only reason he was in Pawnee that night was because he was, technically, on vacation. He'd rented a small cabin on the water, fishing and relaxing with his sons, but of course, the head of Taskforce Bloodhound had to be contactable 24/7, just in case their target was having a busy weekend. Though, if he was perfectly honest, he'd taken several minutes of deep-thinking until he actually started believing the police officer who'd called him to say they'd arrested Aiden Pearce and were bringing him in. It seemed like a joke any way he looked at it.

The police station was alight. An emergency call from Blume HQ and an ensuing car chase had congealed at least a dozen squad cars around the station and while it was new and shiny, it wasn't that big. The cruisers were parked up and down the road, some still with their signal lights on and their occupants hanging around in clusters, as if they'd forgotten how to behave. Pawnee residents had already started to appear, too, hanging around a little further away but with their phones ready and Yamada wouldn't be surprised if the pictures and videos they took were already all over the internet. He was surprised the press wasn't there, yet, but they'd come soon. He'd called in his team, they would be here soon enough and while he was convinced they were as dumbfounded as he was, they would be able to keep order out here.

Yamada was greeted by the police chief, given a quick summary of what had already gone done and he listened quietly, storing the information away for later. He asked to see the footage of Pearce's processing, not quite sure what he'd been expecting to see.

The good cop in him was proud of his colleagues' professionalism when none of them made an inappropriate comment or tried to use their sudden power to humiliate Pearce. Yamada's more cynic side merely assumed that Pearce, even now, seemed too dangerously incalculable to taunt in this way.

In the pervasive absence of reliable information, Bloodhound had sunk tremendous energy into what could only be described into accumulating trivia. Whether Pearce was right or left-handed, what car brands he preferred, what emotional attachment he felt to the brown jacket he often wore — and whether its loss was somehow meaningful. At some point, Yamada, then a new member in the group, had wondered when they would break out the Ouija boards and crystal skulls.

Though, while Yamada considered this behaviour silly and unproductive, he couldn't completely blame his colleagues for their helplessness. ctOS was their weakness. Normally, the system was the best tool in fighting crime, but in Pearce's case, the over-reliance on it made it nearly impossible to catch him. CPD's strategies, their information infrastructure, their response tactics, it was all ctOS dependant. They lacked the tools to work without it and while Bloodhound's budget was generous, it didn't allow them to recreate their own system from scratch.

Under Yamada's predecessor, the more esoteric approaches had been phased out, though their more useful results still lingered in the profiles they'd constructed on Pearce. He _was_ right-handed, for one, but he'd acquired apt proficiency with his left. It wasn't the kind of information that'd track him down, or keep him pinned if they did, but it might come in handy if an agent actually did get close enough. No one ever had, though, and Yamada sometimes wondered if that wasn't just an insult in itself. Pearce had never seemed to consider Bloodhound a serious threat.

"You ready?" the police chief asked as he stepped in to Yamada's side, looking through the one-way mirror into the interrogation room.

The room seemed to be cast from one, smooth pale material that made stainless steel look tacky and old-fashioned. It wasn't just sound-proof, it shielded from all wireless signals and the one-way mirror was also one-way bulletproof, turning the room not only into a perfect prison, but also a perfect trap. Set seamlessly into the walls and ceiling were a dozen different monitoring devises, leaving no corner untouched, no shadow unsupervised. And the people placed on the wrong side of the solid table would find their last, involuntary muscle tremor analysed and interpreted, recorded for the court to draw their conclusions.

After being secured on hands and feet, Aiden Pearce hadn't moved much. He'd shifted in his seat, looking for a slightly more comfortable position for his battered body. Gently, he'd increased the pull on the cuffs on his hands and feet, testing their reliability, but even the finest instruments hadn't been able to catch any disappointment at the resilience of his bonds.

A notification flared up on the tablet, drawing his attention for the second he needed to dismiss it. Just his fridge, reminding him to stock up on asparagus.

"Sure," Yamada said, shrugging as he left. "Why not?"

The door to the interrogation room swung nearly soundlessly on some unseen mechanism and Pearce tilted his head just a little to better regard him. Yamada wondered what conclusion Pearce would draw about him, if he'd seem unassuming and bookish with his lack of Lenses and the pair of black-rimmed glasses on his nose. Yamada set the sleek tablet on the table in front of him. Ignored Pearce in favour of watching the tablet automatically connect to the station's network.

Yamada sat down, facing Pearce and pretended to regard him him thoroughly for the first time.

After his arrest, Pearce had been stripped of clothes and searched for weapons he'd been given grey scrubs to wear, the only clothing Pawnee's police station had available. He'd been herded through a mandatory shower and his hair was still damp. A paramedic had stitched, glued and bandaged his obvious injuries, but he still looked worn and battered, bruises showing on his collarbone and exposed arms, one side of his face was beginning to swell and a bad gash on the side of his neck was still seeping blood and Yamada had seen earlier a similar injury at his leg was beginning to make the cloth stick to it. He might have more severe internal injuries, but his getaway car had had a reinforced frame and while its exterior was mangled, the cabin had remained largely intact.

Pearce had had no weapons, but they had retrieved an empty gun and a broken phone from the crashed car. It seemed like a sad little list of belongings, disproportionate to the man's place in the public consciousness, but Yamada had seen these cases and it made a sick sort of sense. If you couldn't hold on to anything you were left standing there with your hands empty. And that was Pearce, though it would take a while before the truth of it got through Pearce's skull, if indeed it ever did.

"I'm Lieutenant John Yamada," he introduced himself, voice carefully neutral. "But I imagine you know that."

He paused, looked Pearce over again.

Yamada said, "Do you require additional medical assistance?"

Pearce didn't answer, barely even moved and his face was passively indifferent. He might even be dazed, too confused to even recognise his need for help or unable to say as much, but his gaze was perfectly focussed on Yamada, waiting for his next move.

Yamada resettled himself in his seat, not intending to offer a stage for Pearce's tough guy act.

"For the protocols," Yamada said. "I'm John Yamada, team leader of Taskforce Bloodhound. You've been arrested under suspicion of multiple homicides, aggravated assault, grand theft auto, compromising of information networks, identity theft, various acts of terrorism…" he took a deep breath and glanced down at his tablet, a finger slowly scrolled downward.

"And I see no one's read you your rights," Yamada arched his brows.

He looked up at Pearce, folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward a little.

"That means anything you say now, it's going to be inadmissible. Just between you and me, you know?"

He shook his head in honest bewilderment. "You have no idea… when I took this post, my predecessor, he left me a very long list of questions for you, but, you know what? It all just boils down to 'why?'. Why the fuck would you do anything of what you do? Why?"

Pearce didn't answer, just looked back at Yamada calmly, not bored exactly, but not particularly engaged either.

When the silence stretched, Yamada spread his hands out in front of him, leaned forward to fix Pearce a little sharper.

"Come on, what do you have to lose?" he asked. "I'm not the enemy. Whoever hurt you and set you on this path, it's probably long gone. It's long over. So why not just _try_ to give an answer? Because, do you know what I think? I think you _can't_. I think there's no answer. You don't have any fucking idea why you do what you do."

When Pearce continued to show no reaction, Yamada huffed to himself and said, "It's been more than ten years. I bet it feels longer to you. Like a lifetime."

He rubbed the side of his nose, pushed himself off the table and back in the chair, watching Pearce flawlessly disinterested exterior.

"Alright," Yamada finally said, stared at his tablet and dismissed another notification from his fridge. He matched Pearce's bored demeanour. "You have the right to remain silent…"

As he recited the Miranda speech on autopilot, he used the chance to study Pearce again, watching for even a hint of interest in the proceedings. He'd expected Pearce to be like stone under pressure, it wasn't exactly in the profiles, but it was everywhere between the lines. He wondered what he should do about it, wryly aware that the officers who hadn't read him his rights probably knew it wouldn't make a difference.

"A lifetime," Yamada picked up again and caught Pearce's gaze wandering down to his tablet briefly.

"Always on the run, always in a chase maybe. Never close to anyone, never trusting anyone. Do you realise how hard it was to find people associated with you? And none of them had anything truly useful to say. Just… abandoned safe-houses and dead-drop cloud storage and throwaway emails. What a terrible way to live."

He paused again, "Aren't you glad it's over?" He laughed a little at himself, added, "Maybe? Just a little? Maybe it's time to kick back and relax?"

Yamada made a small gesture with his hand. "Man in his fifties, it can't be easy to keep up. How much longer do you think you have?"

He was about to say more when another notification on the tablet attracted his attention and he frowned, briefly distracted, then dismissed the interruption and looked back at Pearce.

"You know, we tried to built a profile on you without anything you might have fed us, it's a lot of piecemeal. Your father in Belfast, your immigration files, your SAT score, your original DMV application. We even tracked the copy of an old lease, co-signed by a girl. We tracked her, too. You want to know what she had to say?"

Pearce moved his head, but the gesture was so faint, it barely registered beyond the faint assumption that Pearce didn't want his neck to tense up.

"No, then," Yamada said, shrugging. "I guess you could track her just as easily."

He tapped on the tablet, his finger hoovered a little, then he tapped again. "What about your sister? She lives in Aurora now, that's not so far away. When we went looking for her, we were thinking Alaska, Mexico, Europe… but she's only in Aurora. An hour's drive from here, but I don't think you're seeing her regularly."

The frown slipped back on his face when he glanced at the tablet again, this time it lingered. He cast a skeptical look at Pearce, whose posture and expression gave nothing away. If he went and checked the recordings, perhaps Yamada would be able to spot a pattern in Pearce minuscule movements, but then again, maybe he wouldn't.

Yamada sat up a little straighter, narrowed his eyes at Pearce and said, "You're going to keep this up, aren't you? You'll go behind bars for the rest of your life and you'll never say a word."

Some of the more extreme political elements would regularly bring discussion of the death penalty back and using Pearce's seemly unstoppable rampage was one of the arguments they were using. Just locking someone away, feeding them, providing for them, wasn't an appropriate punishment for the sheer amount of damage Pearce — and people like him — were inflicting on society. It wasn't to happen, though, at least not because of Pearce. Yamada considered bringing it up anyway, just to see if there'd be a reaction, but he dismissed the thought. Pearce knew. In fact, Pearce probably knew far too many things.

"I'm wondering," Yamada said conversationally. "We dug up some files from your old high school, you were such a terrible student, but you don't look like someone without ambition. And you don't seem like someone without brains, either. So what was that about? Or is that it? The source of your… uh, discontent? Bitterness over your wasted chances? A lack of acknowledgement?"

He pinned Pearce with a hard stare. "Or am I giving you too much credit and you're just another psychopath who needs to have his itch scratched regularly?"

Pearce tilted his head and Yamada was so used to Pearce's imperturbable silence, the small gesture startled him, put his mind into a brief spin, wondering what of all the things he'd said had actually touched a nerve.

What Pearce had heard, a scant half second before it happened, was someone opening the door. Yamada glanced over his shoulder to see a puzzled-looking police officer stick his head in. With the door open, noise spilled into the interrogation room, advertising the amount of commotion outside. It had already been bad when Yamada had come in, with so many police officers on-site, with BCP on the way out from Tech Meadows and all the usual wreckage from Pawnee, a certain level of chaos was to be expected, but it seemed to reach a much more critical level. He even heard car alarms howling, though they didn't seem very close.

"Uh, sir, there's… a… problem," the police officer said and blinked when his phone buzzed. In irritation, he fished his phone from his pocket, swiped without looking and put it away again.

It clicked through Yamada's head very slowly, the way you watched an avalanche build up in front of you. Glacial and enormous and although you were still perfectly safe in this instant in time, there was nothing you could do to stop it from crashing over you.

He glanced at Pearce. He didn't know if he'd caught Pearce unawares, but there was no mistaking the hint of amusement in his face and a glint in his eyes.

Yamada's attention drifted over his tablet, just in time to see the newest notification fade. He looked back at the police officer.

"Are you getting notifications from your fridge, too?" Yamada asked seriously. Some small part of him realised how ludicrous the question must sound, but now? Here? In a room with _this_ criminal?

"Uh, no," the police officer said. "It's my fitness tracker, but… that's it."

He looked pointedly at Pearce, but Yamada just motioned him on. Pearce already knew, Yamada could've reached out and touched that certainty, if he'd wanted to.

"Everything's going crazy," the officer said hesitated and shook his head. "You'll have to see it to believe it."

Yamada considered, digging a hard frown into Pearce's gaze. Whatever was out there, _in here_ he had the answer, but he couldn't crack Pearce like that, he hadn't been making any headway in the few minutes he'd had the upper hand — or thought he had — Pearce was never going to give in when he was in charge. Yamada paused for a moment, realising that perhaps this was the way to break Pearce's silence. Instead of feeding into his stubbornness by trying to threaten or intimidate him, perhaps Pearce would react better to a show of submission, stroking his ego.

The officer still hovered in the doorway as Yamada hesitated, eager to put his theory to the test, but he'd have to put up a better show for Pearce anyway and the interruption could help him with that.

Yamada stood up quickly and hurried after the retreating police officer. Before the door fell closed, he made sure Pearce heard his order.

"Put him under watch, no one goes in, no one comes out, whatever else happens. Is that clear?"

The door fell closed quietly and Yamada followed the police officer to the front of the station. It took a moment for him to place the overall sense of anxiety and to differentiate the noise level from what you'd expect. Many police officers and staff were busy with their phones and tried somehow to appear as if they weren't. Every so often, music began to play and Yamada saw someone lunge for the device and switch it off. Someone ripped off her smart watch and toss it to her desk in frustration, just as Yamada passed, she brought a paperweight down on top of it, cursing. A small component of the cacophony went silent. Closer to the lobby, Yamada even saw a woman blush a bright scarlet when her phone started moaning, clearly playing some sort of porn.

The police officers pointed to the front door and Yamada stepped out to where he saw the police chief and a few others stand, each with the same posture of overwhelmed bewilderment.

He walked out into pandemonium. What inside the station had amounted to a mass malfunction of handheld smart devices was multiplied beyond anything Yamada had ever seen. He'd read about it, though, about the massive ctOS breakdown in 2012. Except, now it was one and half a decade later and there were impossibly more things to go high-wire. As, apparently, they were doing.

Pawnee was alight, all the houses he could see from the entrance of the police station revealed some flickering light, or weird sound. Music and fire alarms howling into the night, peeping phones and watches and arm bands. Parked cars with their engines turned on, music blaring, burglar alarms on full throttle.

Just across the station, someone's robotic vacuum cleaner had got through the door when the Haum system unlocked all doors and windows, sending the machine tumbling down the steps and it's owner hurrying after it.

The people who'd been standing around behind the police lines were occupied with their phones as well, more and more joining them as the people of Pawnee were roused by their technical devices going crazy.

As far as Yamada could see, all of Pawnee seemed affected, far beyond the direct surrounding of the police station itself, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on.

"What the hell?" the police chief demanded and Yamada could do nothing but shrug helplessly.

"I… think we should wait until BCP gets here," he said and heard the police chief huff a little. BCP didn't have the best reputation among real cops, BCP got their noses in everything, always rubbed their authority into people's faces. As far as many cops were concerned, BCP was a bunch of amateurs, armed to the teeth, but too stupid to aim right.

"I know, I know," Yamada said placatingly. "But this really looks like a Blume problem to me."

"Yes, but…" the police chief started. "But guess who'll get to clean up the mess later."

He shouted a series of orders at the officers further down on the ground to clear the area and help people get to their cars to turn down the racket.

"The vigilante," the police chief said to Yamada. "He's the cause of this."

Yamada shook his head. "Indirectly, I'm sure."

He put his hand on the police chief's arm when he started to move away.

"It's obviously an attempt to spring Pearce," Yamada said, squeezing the police chief's arm a little for emphasis. "Whatever else happens, we need to keep the station secure. Don't let yourself or people get sidetracked too much."

The chief narrowed his eyes, but nodded earnestly. Yamada let go of him and turned back to the station.

"What are you going to do?"

"Lock myself in with Pearce and a shotgun," Yamada said and wasn't quite sure if he was joking or not. Before he had a chance to find out, however, something in the noise changed, a distant wave of shouting and Yamada turned back to the the street and watched as the crowd moved like water and opened the way for a heavy pick-up holding straight for the station with its headlight blinking on and off as if agitated. For an insane moment, Yamada was convinced the pickup would simply keep going, accelerate up the steps to the station's front door and smash into it with full force.

Yamada wasn't sure if the station was really solid or if it merely looked like it was and the pickup's dull growling revealed that it had a combustion motor and probably a large tank full of burnable gasoline to go with it. Someone could even have rigged it to blow the station to smithereens.

But the pickup simply stopped, driverless and ominous while the officers hurried to clear a larger space around it.

The pickup's engine's roared louder and it reversed suddenly, almost like making a jump, turned its wheels and suddenly sped forward, crashing into the parked police cruiser there. It reversed again and then drove in a sharp circle, just past the other parked cars and making the people ran out of its way.

More of the crowd was trying to gain some more distance, but from his slight vantage point, Yamada saw that curious onlookers further back were pushing forward. Pawnee was a small town, but it seemed like most of its inhabitants were out tonight. Somewhat less close to shock than the situation might actually warrant, Yamada spotted the sign on Jedediah's Bar light up, opening for business in the chaos.

The pickup had cleared the entire space in front of the station now, turned back around again, took a running-up and drove straight into a police-car, smashing it with its solid front benders.

"Someone get in that thing and shut it down," the police chief called, gestured for one of his officers, who nodded. Like advancing on a wild animal, the officers advanced on the car, but stopped abruptly, when the pickup reversed again and freed itself of the car stuck to its fenders. It turned back around and just as one of the officers got close to it, the pickup suddenly accelerated straight for the entrance of the station. Just like Yamada had pictured before, the pickup sped up, then braked at the last minute.

The chief, scurried away to the side like everyone else, shouted another order. But for Yamada, it all became background noise as a realisation stabbed through him like lightning strike. Feeling panic climb up his throat, Yamada threw himself around and ran through the station. The very last thing he saw outside was a second car beginning to box itself free of its parking lot.

Yamada got halfway through the station when the loud shattering announced that the pickup had actually smashed into the front of the station. He glanced back, saw the front of the pickup stuck through the destroyed entrance and watched it pull back and forth, as if trying to free itself and continue its rampage.

Yamada cursed, tore himself from the sight and fell into a flat ran on the last stretch to the interrogation room. The officer he'd ordered to stand watch was still there, although twitchy and confused, with his hand flexing to his gun at every new noise.

"What the hell is going on, sir?" he asked, but Yamada ignored him and unlocked the interrogation room, prepared for practically anything. He pushed through the door and stood frozen.

The scene hadn't changed. Pearce moved his head a little to regard him, but otherwise his posture was just as disinterestedly relaxed as it had been throughout their earlier talk. The tablet was exactly where he'd forgotten. Pearce's cuffs didn't give him enough room to reach across the table, but somehow it didn't count, because Yamada had left a hacker alone with a piece of equipment that connected automatically to the police station's network.

He studied Pearce's face, searched that carefully blank expression for anything at all, a hint of his thoughts or intention. The noises from outside and inside the station still crested up against him from behind, the same hellish racket it had been before. Shouldn't people have turned all their devices off by now? Why was it still going on?

He heard a strangled cry, close by and turned around, had time to see the slim shape appear in the doorway and realised it wasn't the police officer he'd left there, but his thoughts were wiped clean when a taser was pushed into his stomach. Twitching, he collapsed, struggled with holding on to his consciousness, but it didn't matter when his body might as well not be his own anymore. Before he could recover, he felt the plastic bit of a zip-tie around his wrists, before he was pulled clear of the door.

"Tablet," he heard Pearce say.

"Please give me the tablet, thanks for saving me," a woman's voice replied, adrenaline making her sound breathless and made the remark seem petty rather than humorous.

"Get the cop from outside," Pearce added.

She snorted a laugh, "Like anyone has time to look."

But from his position on the floor, Yamada heard the door move as she obeyed. With every breath he took, Yamada recovered a little better, hoisted himself up with a shoulder against the wall. He watched the unknown woman drag the police officer through the door and dump him, bound like Yamada and also struggling back from being tasered.

The woman wore a ski-mask, hiding most of her face and hair from sight. She kept herself positioned by the door with the taser in her hand and a gun holstered under her arm, a bag slung across her back.

"Hey, take your time," she said after a long minute of silence while Pearce focussed on the tablet.

"I thought they had no time to look."

"Yeah, but…" she stopped and said nothing.

Yamada saw no reason to try and shout uselessly into the insulation of the interrogation room, even if it wasn't so loud outside, it was unlikely anyone would hear and Pearce's friend was right, it would be some time before anyone had time to wonder where Yamada had gone or to check up on their prestigious detainee.

Yamada pushed himself a little further up on the wall, used his legs to help until he was seated with his back to it. He looked over the woman briefly, but fixed on Pearce.

"What are you even doing?" Yamada asked, knew he sounded tired. "What's the point?"

He expected Pearce to ignore him the way he'd done throughout, but Pearce actually looked up from the tablet, trained a thoughtful gaze on Yamada as if he seriously considered the question.

"We both know there isn't one, don't we?" Yamada insisted.

Yamada thought he should see something like triumph or smugness in Pearce's face, but it seemed unable to penetrate his affected indifference. Keeping his gaze on Yamada, Pearce slipped his finger over the tablet and the cuffs on his hands and feet opened, then smoothly retracted into the table and floor.

Despite himself, Yamada felt a surge of panic go through him. He knew Pearce didn't indulge in wanton slaughter, it wasn't his style, but Yamada had seen too many details about the people Pearce _did_ kill. He knew what the vigilante could do to people he thought deserved it and it wasn't the kind of thing that helped you sleep at night. So while his rational mind told him Pearce wouldn't kill them, his gut still lurched at being dropped into an enclosure with an unshackled predator.

Pearce got up from the table, took the gun the woman held out to him, with the tablet still in his other hand. He stepped past Yamada on the way for the door. The other police officer made a strange move and for a panicked second Yamada was afraid the man would try something, kick or trip Pearce, but he must have realised how futile it'd be.

Unexpectedly, Pearce crouched down in front of Yamada, traced his gaze over him, lingered on the zip-ties before he pulled it back to his face.

"You wouldn't understand," Pearce said and keeping his gaze on Yamada again, slipped his finger over the tablet once more and the station plunged into darkness.

* * *

"How did you get in?" Pearce asked as he slipped after Mia into the darkened corridor. 

"Fire exit on the first floor," Mia answered. "Knocked the alarm out with an EMP blast and Ray and Tobias are putting on one hell of a show outside."

The blackout wasn't really a blackout, Pearce hadn't been able to go deep enough into the system to even get at these controls. He'd merely used the tablet to access the Haum software that controlled the environmental settings and used it to simultaneously turn all the lights off. It wasn't going to last for very long and Yamada and the other cop weren't secured, either. But for the moment, Pearce and Mia could slip through the dark police station unobserved. The cops had too many things to occupy their attention, making them easy to avoid on the short trek upstairs and through another corridor until they spotted the glowing outline of the fire exit door.

The lights came back on, closely followed by shouting from below, but Mia didn't let herself be distracted, just raised the EMP gun and fired at the door, making the glow briefly disappear for the time they needed to slip through.

Mia slid down the stairs smoothly, but then waited as Pearce climbed the stairs.

"You hurt?" she asked concerned.

"Just tired of showing off," he said and picked up her arm, pulled her unresisting body in a circle to get at the backpack she wore, opened it and stashed the police tablet.

"What's our ride?"

"Dirt bike," Mia said, "Parked over there."

She pointed, then set out in the direction. Pearce only nodded, saying nothing.

The fire exit had led them to the back of the police station, where it was comparatively quiet. T-Bone and Frewer were trying to focus the cops' attention to the front, taking off the heat while Pearce and Mia slipped away, but the nearby houses were all lit and there were even people leaning out the open windows, some with their phones out to record the mayhem. None of them seemed to notice them or realise the significance.

It sounded like self-driving cars were still rampaging while every conceivable smart device was behaving as if possessed, adding to the noise of an increasingly agitated and confused crowd.

Mia led the way through a narrow path between two houses and to another road, where the bike was parked.

As they approached it, she said, "Don't even think about it. I rescued you, I'll drive."

Pearce chuckled a little, though the sound came off as a little stale. He said, "Made up your mind about spooning, did you."

"Haha," Mia intoned as she swung her leg over the bike, leaned forward to start the engine while Pearce got on the back and slung an arm around her waist.

The electric engine of the bike hummed quietly to itself as Mia accelerated down the road, then took a corner onto a dirk track leading away from the town of Pawnee and into the deep unrefined darkness of the undergrowth.

* * *

Things didn't calm down until Blume finally showed up. They drove down from Tech Meadows with three broadcast vans and presumably overrode any signal that was being sent to all the devices that had gone off the rocker. Yamada was leaning on the coffee vending machine when it happened and was surprised when the thing actually made him coffee instead of spewing it into his face. 

For the moment, he listened to the hiss of hot liquid and let the rest of the chaos wash over him. He wasn't sure if he was luckier than his predecessors or even more jinxed then them. Although well-paid and well-equipped, Taskforce Bloodhound tended to be seen as a career dead-end. No matter what you did, you somehow never had any success to show for it. Usually, you didn't even have substantial results to put into your reports and files. And he, John Yamada, he'd been given the opportunity to actually interrogate Aiden Pearce and he'd blown it. He wasn't sure if it was his fault, but he probably couldn't salvage his reputation no matter how he tried to spin it.

He picked up the plastic cup and took a first sip, spared a wry thought at whoever had overseen the renovation of the police station and had made sure that somehow even the vending machine coffee tasted like coffee.

With that thought and the taste on his tongue, he watched as Emily Knight stepped past the ruined lobby and slowly strode towards him, looking around her and taking in the damage with a curious, detached look on her face.

Dark pantsuit, loosely fitting a lean body, hands tucked casually away in her pockets and eyes sharpened under their digital Lenses as she took everything in. You could work with Emily Knight, if you managed to stomach her overbearing attitude, her priorities and her unconventional concept of due process, but she wanted to solve problems before anything else. She dispensed ctOS privileges like the member of some ancient order of mystics. There were channels to go through, but to this day, Yamada was still unsure what the parameters were to make queries be answered comprehensively. Knight got that part down flawlessly and she showed the occasional soft spot when someone bought her a drink or told a good joke.

Tonight, Yamada stood in ground zero of the smoking debris Pearce had left the police station of Pawnee as and greeted her with wan smile and the coffee cup raised in weary salute.

She accepted it with a raised eyebrow, an amused quirk on her lips.

"You're smiling," Yamada said. "Is there anything here I've missed? Because none of this seems like a laughing matter to me."

"There's a pattern," she said. "A very interesting one. It's right in front of you, don't tell me you can't make it out."

Yamada watched her tap her phone and her focus drifted away from him as she concentrated on something the Lens was showing her, obvious she intended to leave him his space.

The calm after the storm was more draining in many ways than the chaos of before had been. For a moment, it was all that Yamada managed to see, surveying the space around him. A small, devastating force of nature had done this, it couldn't be just one man. Especially one who'd just been ran down in the street, crashed his car only to surrender to the police without further resistance. Pearce hadn't had the means to instigate any of it.

"Pearce had help," Yamada said.

"In our estimate, Pearce works with three to five people, all of a skill level comparable to his own. We assume there's some overlap in skills, but some of them will be complementing Pearce's own."

"Kenney."

The small, inevitable grimace anyone at Blume would pull whenever Kenney was brought up. Yamada was too tired to question the tiny spark of satisfaction it brought.

"One of them," Knight said with every attempt at an even tone. "Is almost certainly Raymond Kenney."

Yamada hated the way Knight just stared into space for several minutes without even so much as a nod or a remark. _Of course,_ he knew she was reading something on her digital Lens, almost certainly something important to him, even, but it was still aggravating in its own way.

Besides, she was clearly setting this up as some great win and it really didn't look like it. Maybe it would've been, if she'd somehow managed to get her people down here some minutes earlier. Or, indeed, if they hadn't fucked up up in Tech Meadows to start with. Yamada bit the comment back, for the moment, he'd only use it she forced him to, otherwise, that argument was going to remain unused until he needed it.

Knight finally lowered her phone.

"I saw the bar is open. I'll buy you a drink," Knight said and started walking without making sure he followed.

Yamada took a quick swig off the coffee, gave an inward shrug and dropped it into the bin. If this was the only way to get anything straight out of her, he wasn't going to complain. The police chief and BCP had the situation under control and they didn't need him standing in the way while they tried to get a handle on the situation and where the cleanup should start.

The bar had turned into a central base for the onlookers, hanging around the front with their beers in hand, quite apparently enjoying the show from their vantage point. Though the bar hadn't been spared the general pandemonium and by the looks the owner had taken the hands-on approach in dealing with it. As Yamada's eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior, he spotted the moose head on the floor, clearly dislodged from it's place on the wall and dumped there, its power-cord disconnected. As Yamada looked around, he spotted other, similarly unplugged or dissembled gadgets.

Knight turned from the bar with two bottles of beer and motioned at him with her head to a small, empty table further back.

"So you gonna enlighten me?" Yamada asked finally, leaned over his beer. It was even darker back here and he thought about how late it was and how tired he should be.

Knight smiled, shook her head, took a sip from her beer. "You're still not seeing it?" she asked in a mixture of honest surprise and smugness.

"Well, what I'm seeing is that every single fucking thing ever developed by _your_ company went poltergeist on us, up to and including a goddamn pickup, which ploughed right into the police station. So yeah, I'm seeing that the vigilante is doing the exact same thing he's ever done, just… bigger and louder and he's brought friends this time."

"I admit, he did some damage tonight," she said, but her smile stayed firmly in place. "I'll also mention that he's done us a service, even if that wasn't his intention. We gathered a wealth of data about possible security gaps and exploits. He didn't reach the server room, which we're certain was his ultimate goal. He seems to have stolen some software components, but nothing that'd compromise our new operating systems."

Yamada took another sip, looked around and squinted at the window, hoping to make out some details out there, but it was too smudged.

"What about all the hacks?" he asked. "It looks like practically _everything_ was compromised."

Knight kept smiling. "Everything," she agreed. "Except ctOS itself. The police station already runs on our new software to which neither Pearce nor Kenney have any access. That was what they were after and they failed. What happened here is due to security holes in third party apps. In fact, it was everyone's third party apps. We have a rigorous vetting process for apps, but ultimately, their developers are responsible for their work, not Blume."

"Your PR department probably won't let anyone forget that, ever."

She laughed a little, "That's not my concern."

Her expression darkened a little and she took a slow breath. "I admit, tonight could have gone better. We didn't expect the kind of concerted assault Pearce mounted against us tonight and we were slow to react. If we'd been able to keep the pressure on, Pearce — and Kenney — would be in custody and stay there."

"Hear hear," Yamada joked, the thin layer of alcohol was beginning to make things seem slightly more amusing, perhaps Knight had warmed up a little before coming out and that's why she seemed to be talking all this so casually.

"So let me get this," Yamada said. "Pearce lost. Your new stuff rolls out, Pearce is gone from ctOS? Sounds too good to be true."

"You'll see it. Next year, he's caught, he has nowhere to hide."

It was Yamada's turn to laugh. "Yeah, well, no, that's not happening."

"I'm a realist, John," Knight said. "I'm not one for reciting the company propaganda to appeal to my bosses. They wouldn't pay me if I did. What I've seen about the future, Pearce is done. So's Kenney, so's every dumb little hacker. You can trust me on this. In fact, I'm a little surprised Pearce didn't take the chance to go down fighting. Others did, after all."

Yamada shook his head, smirked into his beer before he took a sip. "You're probably right about the Blume stuff, but I've been studying Pearce for a long time. Mind you, I don't get, like, two thirds of what he's about, but suicide by cop… or BCP… isn't his style at all."

Knight quirked her eyebrow again, doubtfully.

Yamada continued, "No, for real. He likes to think he's the smart one, sees himself as a survivor. If the times have changed, he'll want to change with them, not drown in the tide. He's not like one of those old people who get set in their ways and never stop complaining about how things used to be better. Pearce adapts."

"He _cannot_ adapt _,_ " Knight insisted. "No adaption will save him."

Yamada chuckled. "Yeah, but… we haven't caught him and everything you've said, if that's true — and you sound convincing — then tonight was our last chance to catch him."

"He'll go to ground," Knight concluded, expression pensive as she considered what Yamada was telling her.

"Yes," Yamada confirmed. "None of us won, as these things go. We didn't catch him, you didn't get to shoot him in the head…"

"We would _never_ …"

Yamada just waved her off. "He didn't win, either. But it's over anyway. All that's left is cleanup."

* * *

Although the police fanned out comparatively quickly, the deep dark woods surrounding Pawnee with their often badly kept dirt paths were impossible to cover at the speed the police would have needed to move. 

Mia took a roundabout route, designed to take them as far away from Pawnee and as deep into the woods as quickly as possible. Only when the darkness was thick and unbroken by helicopter search lights did she finally navigate her way back to a paved road and to the Pawnee Bridge, which shortened the time from Pawnee to the outskirts of Parker Square considerably.

The slow summer rain continued, but gradually, clouds boiled up and began to hide the starry sky, otherwise beautifully visible above the landscape around Pawnee. Sometimes, lightning would flare across the sky, brighten the clouds, but it took a long time until its accompanying thunder made itself heard.

"Let's hope we'll get there dry!" Mia shouted against the wind, but though Pearce's grip around her was solid, he himself had grown steadily quieter. Of course, riding a bike didn't exactly lend itself to conversation, even a quiet one like this, but there was something heavy in Pearce's silence and Mia felt compelled to try to alleviate it. She wondered how injured he really was, but couldn't well stop to press him for details he wouldn't give her anyway.

An hours drive out from Pawnee, Mia pulled into the parking lot of a roadside Quinkie's. Deep in the night, there was only a little traffic, most of it clustered around the restaurant itself, but the parking lot was large with more cars parked at irregular intervals. The Blume broadcast van at the corner furthest from it hadn't attracted much interest. These vans usually carried engineers around who'd fix up the countless ctOS boxes, or served as a mobile broadcast tower to cover outages.

A little closer look might have revealed that the Blume colours and logo were a little off and had a hand-painted quality to them. Mia stopped the bike next to it and killed the engine, straightened and felt Pearce pull away from behind her instantly.

T-Bone opened the doors at the back of the van, spread his arms out and jumped down, grinning broadly.

"Aaaand we're complete again! Good to have you back!" he announced and looked for a moment like he was going to hug Pearce, but he dropped his hands instead to look back at Frewer.

"That was a perfect storm we kicked up for you! Pity you couldn't see it!" he said, brought his head around and tilted it to the side, making his dreads drape over his shoulder. "Now, I know you didn't get in the server room, but it's a learning curve and we're just getting started. Frewer and I, we've already packed up the trailer park, and we're ready to move…"

"No," Pearce said, shaking his head in what might be disbelieve.

"What do you mean, no?" T-Bone frowned, expression already markedly darkened. "And the first thing out of your mouth should've been a heartfelt 'thank you'." He paused for a moment, dismissed it with a quick smile. "Or you've thanked Mia already. Any _fucking_ hoodle…"

"You're not listening."

By increment, the animation bled out of T-Bone, froze him to the spot and swivelled him around to face Pearce. He gestured with a pointed finger. "I'm getting tired of this discussion."

"Well," Pearce rasped. "That's probably the only thing we agree on."

"You realise what it means, you walking out now?" T-Bone demanded. "It means it was for nothing. The sacrifices, the fights, the blood, you dragging me out of Pawnee fourteen years ago. Just throw it away. Let Blume have their way, fucking us all over until the fucking heat death of the universe."

Pearce was silent, gaze digging into T-Bone's. "You never stop bringing up my body count. Well, tonight's all yours. Wyland, the security personnel, the people in Pawnee. All on you."

"Ah ah ah," T-Bone made, sharply. "That's not how it is, buddy."

"I told you it wouldn't work."

"I told _you_ going in now was the wrong time to move!"

"It was a fucking act of fucking desperation!" Pearce snapped, taking a crucial half-step forward, narrowly breaching T-Bone's personal space. "And it went down exactly as I predicted."

And then, he stepped back again, body still tense but pretending to relax.

Like Frewer, still poised inside the van, Mia had been too caught up in the scene to even dismount the bike, she still sat there, head craned around to watch the two hackers shout at each other. Tensed up beyond her realisation, Mia almost flinched when Pearce suddenly turned to her.

"Give me the police tablet and your phone," he said, clearly trying to keep his voice even.

Hastily, Mia fumbled both from her bag and handed them over. Pearce took them with a curt nod, glanced up from the devices at her and added, "You should go home, tonight would be best. I'll make sure to get you your money in the next few days."

She blinked slowly, trying to get everything that was happening into order so she could figure out what she even thought about it. "I don't care about the money," she said, a little tonelessly, gaze drifting past Pearce to T-Bone and Frewer.

T-Bone crossed his arms over his chest, glowering at Pearce, but the thoughts were clearly racing inside his head, trying to wring some sort of success out of it. He had plan, Mia knew, there hadn't been time to talk about the details, but T-Bone had considered the possibility that tonight turned into a failure and he'd already been looking at the next moves.

"Your call," Pearce only shrugged. As he turned away, she saw him booting up the phone and the tablet, beginning to transfer her hacking apps to the tablet.

"Aiden," T-Bone said reasonable. "What you're gonna do now?"

At first, Aiden seemed like he wouldn't respond at all. He'd started wandering away from them, along the parked cars, scanning them. With some latency, T-Bone and the others slowly gravitated after him.

"I got a good identity set up," Pearce said. "I own a bit of land, couple of hours out, no one's going to look there."

For a second, he looked up, "It's what you should do, too."

"What about Blume? ctOS? Motherfucking bellwether?"

"Your crusade, not mine," Pearce shrugged.

T-Bone huffed. "Far be it from me to demand any nobles goals from you, but this… it's going to affect _everyone._ "

Pearce looked at him again, then back at the tablet. "What's next? Are you going to bring up my family?"

"You know I wouldn't," T-Bone said earnestly. "But, yes! It'll take their freedoms, too."

Pearce stopped, finally faced T-Bone again and said, "And there's nothing I can do."

He flipped his finger over a button on Mia's phone and a nearby car's lights flared up as it unlocked. T-Bone followed him to the car, then overtook Pearce to block his access to the door, forcing Pearce to acknowledge him.

"Go back to California," Pearce said, surprisingly mildly in contrast to the potentially devastating heat of the argument before.

"Jesus," T-Bone snorted. "Your thick skull's the reason for most of my grey hairs."

But he stepped aside to let Pearce get into the car. He tapped on the phone one last time, then focussed on the tablet and used it to start the car's engine.

"Mia," he said and held her phone out to her. Quietly, she took it, twisted it in her hand awkwardly, looking for something to do with herself in the charged atmosphere.

He hadn't held her gaze, just dropped it away and back to the tablet and the car, as if nothing of this mattered or affected him. He bumped the door into T-Bone's legs, albeit gently, to make him move completely out of the way.

"I'll send you what I find on the tablet," Pearce said. "But it's probably best if we didn't stay in contact."

"There's no way you'll get off my Christmas card list," T-Bone said and while the humour was thin, but real. Even Pearce couldn't quite suppress the twitching in the corners of his lips, but it was too dark and gone too fast to built anything on.

One by one, they left the parking lot.

Pearce first, then Mia hitched a ride with T-Bone and Frewer, because the rain kicked up several degrees of magnitude. They drove her to the next L-station and didn't speak of anything all the way there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reference:** "Command  & control" is the infrastructure used to control a zombie computer network.  
>  The rampaging cars owe more to Daniel Suarez's "Daemon" than to WD 2's ability to remote control them.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Walkthroughs of **Watch_Dogs 2** are on youtube since at least Saturday night. The good news is, the ending is so meaningless, it doesn't contradict anything I've written. Apart from that, Watch_Dogs 2 is crap far beyond my ability to express or critique or even comprehend. There's nothing here for me. Even hating on it seems just… absurd. 
> 
>  **Author's Note: _Brilliancy_** should be considered on hiatus.
> 
> Thank you for reading and supporting me throughout 300k+ words of fanfic.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on 19/Nov/2016**


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